This movie has AJ Bowen who has been in a few movies that I have seen (House of the Devil, You’re Next, Hatchet 2, and Creepshow 3) and one I didn’t like in The Sacrament. Here’s hoping that this is another good one.
This is a tough one to explain because you have 2 VERY different films happening and then they tie together. One story involves a dude who abducts Rachel and Alyssa, ties them up in a barn, and is using them as sacrifices to appease the Rites of Spring, which is a monster of sorts that ensures good crops basically, very Pagan style, but also full female frontal nudity! Rachel frees herself and runs far, far, far far away. During this, these people: Ben, Paul, Amy, and Tommy that have a plan to kidnap this rich dude’s, Ryan, daughter, Kelly, and hold her for 2 million dollars worth of ransom. They kill Ryan’s wife, Gillian, and also abduct the babysitter, Jessica. So when the money exchange happens and other things, Rachel runs through and tells them to run and now the stories intertwine, in more ways than one.
In that regard, this film was actually pretty fucking smart. I won’t lie and tell you that it was executed flawlessly, Therein lies the biggest problem, there are a lot of cliches used. In all fairness, damn near all horror movies are unoriginal, cliche ridden, but they put their own spin on it. It amazes me how critical people can be of these things, but be ok with it when a different film does the exact same thing. It’s unfair and unjust criticism oftentimes. ON IMDB, so jacmo is suggesting that e’s seen this with Jeepers Creeper, The Collector, Amusement, and Kill Theory. Yeah, aspects could be seen in these, but none went and combined the elements into a film. So that begs the question, are you going to be THAT asshole that can’t handle more than one concept because it offends your teeny tiny brain, or can you be a little more open minded? Like, we are at a point where we are throwing varying combinations out there, and some work, some don’t. When Public Enemy and Anthrax joined forces, I’m sure assholes were pissed about that.
The biggest problem that I found with this film was the lack of explanation and history of the monster and the ritual. In We Are Still Here, they did a great job explaining why things were the way that they were. This never does explain enough. Then you have stupid shit like one chick being in a car, that’s already running, and the monster is on top of the hood, and bashing out the windshield, and all she has to do is hit the gas, but instead she whimpers for 10-20 seconds, almost getting killed. Add to that, that fucking ending was trash, from my perspective. Girl power ran wild in this, and it was beyond nauseating and straight up ignorant. Why did they do what they did to Kelly? I am left just being angry by the end of it, and that is when you go back and use your rage to nitpick the hell out of a film. If you have a good ending, you think about the things that you like, where if it ends on a sour note, you may tend to nitpick too much.
Rating – 5.1 because I know that I will watch it again, and I do think I missed some things early on. Still, I don’t think it will change the ending from being shitty. And that is a shame because I really do like AJ Bowen’s films so far.
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Please go find a copy and support the creators. It’s on NetFlix, and it’s like an hour and 20 minutes, so try it and form your own opinion rather than taking somebody else’s as the gospel.