This is one of the most original movies I've seen in a long time. Most of the reviews you'll see online praise it for its world-building, and for good reason. It creates a unique mythology that few movies have the guts to attempt these days, and I think it deserves massive amounts of praise for that. Bravo to its creators. And while that element is arguably the strongest, it's by no means the only thing the movie has going for it. It's a solid, gripping horror story throughout.
It only has one real issue worth mentioning, and, for me at least, it was a big one. For whatever reason, they've cast actress Rene Leech as a teenage boy named Adam. To get the obvious question out of the way, no, this is neither a trans actor nor a trans character. It's just a woman playing a boy, and it really doesn't work. To be honest, I don't care what performers play what characters as long as they do it convincingly... race, gender, none of it matters as long as the person on the screen comes across completely as who they are in the story, otherwise it's a distraction that distances the viewer from the experience. In this case, Leech is simply too distinctly feminine to pull it off. She seems to have worked hard to capture male mannerisms and carriage, and she did very well, but her posture and her occasionally unmissable breasts ruined the illusion. If the role had been a younger boy and Leech herself were younger, I think she would have done admirably, but as it is I spent the entire movie waiting for the fact that this brother was female to become relevant to the plot. It wasn't until it was nearly over that I realized it wasn't going to happen and the character really was supposed to be male. It was an insurmountable distration from the actual story, and I would have enjoyed the whole thing a lot more had I not been waiting for the reveal.
It's hard to know what to rate it. I'd like to give it an 8, but the casting seriously affected my enjoyment, so it has to be lower than the midpoint. Four stars it is, though in almost all ways it deserves more.
