A family living in a farm is struck with supernatural occurrences which coincide with one member getting sick. The story's structure, like the other commenters said, is typical, even the personalities of some of the characters. That's not necessarily bad, but the film has to have strong details to make it unique from the others in the genre, not to mention cohesive storytelling--and that's where the film missed the mark.
Folk horror films rely heavily on the legend, and this legend has to be explained, especially if the film makers intend to screen it internationally. The legend of the antagonist on this film was just scratched on the surface, and the "rules" were sketchy. Too much exposition is bad but it should be enough for the viewers to understand how things really work. We didn't get that here. Maybe on the sequel?
From the first third of the film, there were already disconnects. There were reactions from characters that were out-of-place; sometimes they reacted too much considering what they only knew, sometimes they said things too early. It's like there were deleted scenes or maybe misplaced ones.
The acting in this film was mixed. One actor was great but there were some who I don't know if they just chose to act that way or the film makers told them to. One character looks overly concerned at times while one character was often nonchalant. I'm not sure if it was meant to be comedic but it made me laugh, I thought it was a horror-comedy film. That's a minus for the atmosphere.
There were also too many characters. That two-hour run time should have been used to flesh out the legend, give more time to the antagonist rather than give dialogue to characters that were hardly used.
The positive on this film is it had creepy moments scattered across those two hours. It had a nice opening scene, the antagonist was scary, the characters are likable, and early on I thought it had the potential to be like 2021's The Medium; however, the insufficient legend information, and the confusing storytelling and atmosphere made this film a wasted opportunity.
I should be giving this film a 6 if not for the big contradictory information it had. There were two contradicting statements made about a character. It's an important detail in the mystery so it's surprising it went unchecked. I'm hoping the sequel is better.
