Sara is a survivor. She’s discovered wandering around the middle of nowhere, covered in blood and holding not only a spear fashioned from a branch but the severed head of something that ain’t human. Her rescuers manage to gently disarm her and bag the severed head of whatever the hell it is Sara has possession of. They hear screaming coming from the woods and get Sara into their car, getting the hell out of the area and transporting Sara to a hospital. The girl has been missing for a bit after a camping trip with her dodgeball team went bad, Sara’s sister Sam is happy as hell she’s alive as is the law officer who has been working on her case. Unfortunately Sara doesn’t remember what exactly happened but it’s coming back in flashes and her missing friends are still being looked for. Against her sister’s wishes, Sara decides to help the local law search for her friends and tells them they’re going to need bigger guns. Something attacked she and her friends and Sara feels it’s necessary for them to recover the bodies of the people she knows are deceased. With “monsters” not being legally acknowledged, the state is looking to charge Sara with the murders of her friends. Now Sara has to convince people that monsters exist and that she is not a lunatic who killed her friends. PTSD and survivor’s guilt weigh on our hero and a reporter begins to dig into things, convinced there may actually be things that go bump in the night. Thank god there’s an actual corpse to examine and it’s one of the most important scientific discoveries in centuries… and that brings us just shy of the halfway point. The final girl’s flashbacks have an odd reenactment vibe to them which works well at making them feel somewhat surreal. It’s an interesting choice in an intriguing film with a bunch of interesting choices from story structure to focus. Some awkward performances and dialogue don’t take away from anything because it’s such a different kind of monster movie that I’m pretty damn impressed even with its budget working against it. More importantly, our lead Caylin Sams is great, the direction is confident, most of the sparse humor really lands and it never feels like it’s wasting anyone’s time. Movies like this are why I will watch any damn independent horror film that comes my way. Sometimes, you give the right film a chance.
No comments:
Post a Comment