Working on a true-crime podcaster, a woman and her partner who have made a name for themselves as survivors reaching out to others decide to tackle a case that hits close to home for one of them as they look into the serial killer they escaped from, bringing them into the killer's orbit once again.
This was a decent if somewhat problematic genre effort. What works best here is the way this one manages to tie in a wholly modern approach to the traditional investigation into the life of a serial killer. The use of a true-crime podcast delving into the history of crime in their area and reporting on the same killer that had attacked one of them earlier which forced them into the path they choose offers a rather strong touch with the modern popularity of true crime podcasting. This goes a long way towards making the investigation into the life of the killer which soon puts them in his path as the final half takes the clues revealed about their past into a rousing, chilling series of encounters which have a lot of great psychological torture and some fun graphic kills here that are far more entertaining than they deserve to hold this one up. There are some issues with this one that hold it back. One of the main issues here is the likability of the main girls as we spend so much time with which is a big problem to get over. Their disparate personalities already make it quite difficult to believe that they'd be genuine friends but so much is reliant on the more outgoing one trying to to coerce her friend to go along with what she wants merely for the fame it'll lead to rather than trying to perfect their reporting makes this even more troubling. That everything we get between the two paint them out as a reckless firestarter merely for the views while the other is the cautious note-taker who wants to be truthful and accurate makes their plan immensely sketchy when so little is used to spark their interest in everything and is intended to be a big reveal so everything here is quite troublesome and hard to get a handle on. On top of that, the film takes way too long to get going with the whole thing getting to the halfway point before they even decide to go investigate the killer. With all the work done trying to get to know the girls, their history together, and the type of show they run, it feels way too dragged out with this type of material rather than going for the traditional genre fare. While it attempts one or two reenactments of the crimes to try to spice things up, there's not enough of them nor are they long enough to counteract the lack of action on display and is again let down even further with how it makes us feel about them anyway so it's all even lower as a result. The last issue here is the generally lackluster motivation and reasoning for what's going on as it tries to make some connection to the modern world corrupting people and preventing them from reaching their true spiritual awakening but it's buried so late in the film with such a jumbled delivery it's hard to make sense of what it means or why we should care, making this one quite a bit lower than it should be.
Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.
