Here’s another NetFlix gem….hopefully.
This is found footage/documentary style. Sara is Deb’s daughter, and Deb has Alzheimer’s. Deb is having second thoughts about being a subject of this Sarah tries talking her out of it. The family is broke and they really need the money to keep the house. A week later, they are welcome back. This one dude is touching everything like a douche. Deb is so worried about people touching things. We have a nice, thorough explanation of what Alzheimer’s is. Deb refers to it as a senior moment. Deb’s first husband died of a pulmonary embolism. Yikes. Scary to think about. Deb was just handling a snake, like a hoss. Deb takes a knife to Gavin the douche bag because she thinks that he took her spade. They find it in the freezer. Deb likes digs into her throat and they take her to the hospital. She is in the 2nd stage of the disease.
We see some of her paintings, and one has a creepy shadowy figure. Sarah is moving out, it is taking a huge toll on her. There was some banging on the ceiling, so Sarah looks upstairs, but Gavin finds Deb down with him. He goes into the room with her. She is staring out the window and now nailing the windows shut. Deb has gone missing at night. Uh oh. The windows is open that was nailed, the robe had blood on it, and she had some gashes in her back, and she was outside by the garden and attacking something. She was crazed.
They review the footage, and Deb just goes from the ground and is magically up on the counter, no break in the video time code. Harris is like this old dude who helps out there and is a really nice helpful older gentleman. I like him a lot.
They are showing her the footage of her, and Deb asks why they didn’t stop her. She gets crazed and attacks Gavin again. They brought her to the hospital, she had an epidural. He skin is scaly. While they were doing a simple mental test, she ripped the skin off of her arm. Why is she allowed back home? Now she is eating her figurines. Damn, and now there is a snake inside. this is good and creepy. We see some paintings that Deb did, and they all have a dark figure, and it looks like the Grim Reaper. Deb shows up and the window suddenly opens. Gavin and Luis threaten Mia that they will leave if they don’t get double the money and this is Mia’s project. She agrees.
At night, Deb is sleepwalking, we just saw Deb’s ass. At night, Deb’s old switchboard is making all kinds of crazy noises and Deb is missing. They go looking in a closet for her, they jump and see nothing. They hear another door. They go up and send Gavin first up this attic that is never open. Deb is up there naked at the phone switch thing. Well, old lady boob, I’m counting it. Deb starts speaking in a demon-like way, the phone thing sparks, and they get her a doctor. They are translating and she is speaking French and talking about being the 5th serpent. Harris tells Sarah to get these filmmakers out of there or else he will, and Sarah says that they are staying.
There is a correlation to the switchboard number that she was trying to do when she got shocked, and to some notebook that the found. This all leads to a famous pediatrician child murderer who used this ritual for immortality involving snakes. So Sarah asks Deb if she remembers the name of the pediatrician, and Deb thinks that he was a client of Deb’s. Deb says that he’s not missing, by the way, he is dead, more specifically murdered.
Deb gets abruptly, and we find out that she puked up earthworms and dirt. Harris is in the hospital room with her and gets escorted out. We now get hospital room cam. Harris is acting shady. They hypothesize that Harris killed the pediatrician and that Deb dug the hole and been hiding it. Harris shot the shit out of the crew’s van. Gavin is done and taking off, smartly.
At the hospital, Mia and Luis can’t find Sarah or Deb, so Mia goes looking for the doc. We see Deb roaming the halls of the pediatric ward, and we see Deb has a kid and is holding her hand. So now they are looking for her, and the parents are freaking out obviously. They find Deb in like a lab or kitchen. The doc finds her with the missing girl. They save the girl and now are putting restraints on Deb, and she is screaming weirdly again.
Harris is visiting Deb, but seems to be doing better. Mia has got a meeting with a professor in this field. He suggests that weak-minded are susceptible to demonic blah blah. He shows an interesting case that he studied that required a witch doctor and a burning of a dead body. Harris is undoing the restraints at the hospital. She asks Harris to close the door and to kill her. Poor Harris. He grabs a pillow to smother her to death, stuff in the room start shaking, and then the TV flew across the room and hurt Harris badly.
Harris tells Sarah that Deb killed the guy and they buried him alive. So off they go to dig, and they found the spade that was used earlier in the film, it was 5 feet deep. They are looking for the body in the house. They see the ceiling is wet, so up to the attic they go. There is some weird shit and it smells bad. They a burlap sap that smells beyond awful. They found a body. They that they are finding a bunch of snakes. They go to burn the bodies, and there was a big explosion. There was a guy in the house that they see through the window. They get a call, Deb has broken out of her restraints. They gather the remains of the body and we go to the hospital.
We see that Deb broke lose, something and snake venom. Deb has broken free and grabbed the same girl. She bit a cop in the throat who tried to stop her. So they are going to where the ritual takes places. They go to cuff Deb, she spits venom in the one officer’s face. Luis takes the officer back to the hospital. Now we have Sarah, Mia, and lady cop looking for Deb and girl. Oh, and the girl kept repeating stuff about the nice man and the river. It was creepy. They enter a building and Linda, the cop goes first. There is a gunshot. Sarah and Mia are now looking for Linda, and they find her and she is dead and has a snake by her. Sarah and Mia are going through this awful cave system full of snakes. The game plan is for Sarah to sedate Deb and Mia grabs the girl Cara. Deb just attacked Mia I think and they got away. Sarah now pulls out a revolver. They find Deb actually with her mouth over Cara’s head, engulfing her like a snake. Deb is just fascinating at this point. They burn the body remains, big explosion.
Everybody is ok. Deb couldn’t be charged or stand trial because of her deteriorating mental condition. And Cara is free of Leukemia I think. Yeah, she got the immortal thing passed on, or the spirit thing. I don’t fucking know.
End film
OK, that ladies and gentlemen is how you do a hand cam, documentary-style horror film. It had a few jumps, but more importantly, it told a chilling tale. Was it flawless? Hell no. Was it really good, considering the genre? Hell yeah! I loved how they really gave a ton of info, developed our characters to the right amount. Alzheimer’s is a terrifying thing. Did I need all of this snake stuff? Yeah, I guess I did in order for the 3rd act to make sense. Was it a little silly at times? Yeah, but most horror is. This is definitely one of the better ones on NetFlix.
Final rating: 6.8
All the pictures used in this blog are for review purposes. They are the property of:
- Bad Hat Harry Productions (as Bad Hat Harry)
- Jeff Rice Films
- Casadelic Pictures (in association with) (as Casadelic)
- Guerin-Adler-Scott Pictures
Please go find a copy and support the creators.