Tom

Tom Mavis was a young boy, who was the subject of intense emotional abuse and as such he made a suicide pact with a powerful demon. And in that small rural town there are a lot of murders, often centering around two places, Edinburgh County Home and the Jr. High School. There is a tremendous mix of film styles. There is scratchy, grainy footage, there is switching from color to B&W and back again. The story jumps all over the place in a very confusing manner. Young girls go into those areas of town, and later are found wandering, scantily clothed and mentally messed up. They even have "breaking news" segments, and on a radio program, an Alex Jones type announcer about what is happening. And there are interviews with locals, as sort of a documentary investigative approach. It is as if too many different approaches were thrown into one movie, and the result is mainly an incoherent mess. Some of that actors seem to be having a fun time doing their roles. That doesn't translate the same for the viewer.

I really loved this movie. It feels like a classic creepypasta story you'd read online and presented in several different formats. You have perspectives of TikTok bloggers, vlog adventurers, mainstream news outlet and interviews, and found footage of events. There's a lot of meta humor sprinkled in that is genuinely very funny. I was fully prepared for the jokes to be too cringe to live but I honestly laughed a lot. The demonic entity and the main creepypasta style villain are interesting and exciting. Mostly a run of the mill demon possession story but it's presented in such a fun way that it doesn't feel stale. You can really tell the cast had a good time and everyone is putting their best foot forward and that really scores a lot of points with me. I really urge anyone wanting to see something fresh to check this out.