kannibalcorpsegrinder

Arriving at a remote cottage, a couple's attempts at building their relationship in seclusion are upended by a revelation that one of their siblings' psychotic tendencies are coming to the forefront in an unexpected way when they follow the couple to the cottage and set about trying to ruin the night.

Overall, this was a pretty solid if troubling genre thriller. The main thing that works here is the solid starting point that offers not just a means of getting the couple to the house but plays well with the idea of mental insanity and isolation. The main point of the first half to set up the couple and their relationship together by showing them arrive at the location and go about getting into the mindset of their forgotten sister trailing them comes about quite nicely overall. Focusing on introducing it so subtly against the rest of the material featuring the marital quirks or general issues with each other slowly turns into a series of exposes on how the sister is so mentally challenged and unhinged that everything going on is quite built up quite well. Even the scenes later on showing the invasion and attempts at rectifying a perceived wrong come together well. With this setting the payoff of the trauma we've gotten until then makes this section of the film descends into a strikingly tense and thrilling series of setpieces that are even more impressive given the one-shot nature of how this plays out, everything here is rather fun. The fact that it's just immensely slow and not that interesting due to the excruciatingly slow pace and tempo of everything as there's so little energy or urgency to anything going on it just sucks the life out of the material. Regardless of how fun everything is and how it all comes together, the lethargic action just undoes everything positive to the point of draining this one completely for its detrimental factors.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language and Violence.

After being kidnapped from her home, a woman goes on the run while attempting to get to safety and eventually finds a remote shack in the woods to hide out in, only to realize the house is the hideout for the couple who kidnapped her and are hiding a deadly secret inside that puts her in danger.

This was a disappointing and somewhat underwhelming genre effort. The main positive point with this one is the incredibly effective series of setpieces found in the final half which put the majority of the scenes until then into fine form. Following up the abduction ploy and the realization that she's been kidnapped, the whole setup brings this into fine reasoning to get her into the house with her wounds so that the second half unfolds with her stuck in the closet waiting for help while avoiding capture. It all works nicely into the later half where the series of supernatural events and activities get brought about in the form of revenge against the kidnappers which gets a series of thrilling visuals to help paint the idea of everything clearly. It's where this one turns the closest into being a genuine genre feature and has some wild action to come about as a result. However, the fact that this one doesn't have much else going for it is due to the structure of this one feeling like a short film stretched out to a feature-length adaptation. Way too much of the film is reliant on watching her bleeding out while hiding in the closet trying not to make noise as the couple are sitting around in the room next to it. This is a creepy enough idea in theory that helps to enhance and explain her situation but it just runs on way too long for its own good and starts feeling repetitive after a while which tends to stretch this out far more than it should. The other issue here is that this all comes about through a slew of rather obvious decision-making that highlights how moronic the whole experience is not pressing the advantage to get out alive, taking every opportunity to keep herself in danger, or failing to recognize the obvious to keep the film going, all of which combine to bring this down.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language and Graphic Violence.

Living with her alcoholic mother, a bullied teen in a small town finally sees her chance at freedom when an accident puts her mother in a coma allowing her to potentially change her life, but when she believes her mother's spirit has followed her must figure out what's going on to stop it.

This was a solid if somewhat problematic feature. One of the better aspects present here is the strong central buildup that takes a fine commentary on the way alcohol impacts a family relationship. This spends quite a bit of the opening section here providing a detailed account of the trials and tribulations facing a family when they succumb unwillingly to alcohol abuse as the film makes it pointedly clear that the amount of verbal and physical abuse the mother dishes out is due to her alcohol abuse. Chaining her up in her room to prevent her from going out to visit friends or live a life, enduring plenty of charged epithets about how much of an unwanted child she was going up, and putting this behavior squarely at the part of her rampant alcoholism which offers up the kind of pertinent background information on her being haunted throughout the film. Those hauntings might be somewhat controversial since that's where this one does have some controversial aspects. While the scenes themselves serve nicely to get an idea of her mental state, what she's going through, and the degree of harm that her mother's put her through with the hallucinations and visions continuing to haunt her, this doesn't offer up much in the way of intriguing or original content. Way too much of the running time is spent on seeing her run away from the responsibilities she has now that she's free so hardly anything here really has a chance to build up to get to a point where it's hardly ever scary due to her psychological brooding over what's going on with her mother's spirit haunting her. Combined with the obvious low-budget limitations present throughout here, these are what bring this one down overall.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language and Violence.