Directed by Jason DeVan. Written by Jason and his wife, Heather DeVan with Dylan Matlock as well. Starring Sydney Sweeney, Jessica Barth, Matt Dallas, Bruce Davison, Madison Lintz, Austin Filson and Heather DeVan.
Plot: a demon stalks a girl with a troubled history when she returns to her hometown.
We should have known what was coming. This movie opens with a Bible verse, which is no different than opening with some other pretentious quote, and we should have seen that no good could come of that. But we watched anyway. Even after the Star Wars scroll happened. Yes, right after the Bible verse flashed on the screen, a Star Wars scroll started. It told us Ashley’s history – how Ashley’s mother, Sarah, mysteriously disappeared and she and her sister were left with their unfit father until the sister went off to college and Ashley went to live with Sarah’s sister, Tanya.
After the scroll is over, you meet Ashley (Sweeney) and Tanya (Barth) as they move back to the hometown in which Sarah went missing. Not sure why this was a good idea, but Tanya seems to think it is. As soon as they are back in town, something rather frightening starts stalking Ashley. It’s pretty alarming actually. It’s the best bit of the movie, this thing that follows her around.
Soon, Ashley meets up with some old friends, Hannah (Lintz), Shane (Filson) and others. She starts hearing things and seeing things and she’s convinced it all has to do with her mother, so her and Hannah do this little seance thing. What they see is NOT her mother though. It’s got horns and smells up the room and makes it cold. Somehow it changes Ashley’s demeanor and she bites Shane while kissing him and has other such “episodes” as well.
Hannah makes one stupid decision too many. Tanya does nothing, but make stupid decisions. By the time the Reverend (Davison) and Pastor John (Dallas) show up, there’s really little hope left.
The movie sets up these really long establishing shots which it doesn’t have time for and we don’t understand the point of. Things happen, texts are sent, that you never even get to see for some reason. Aside from the more well-known actors, the acting is not so good, especially from Barth, who can just not carry this much of a movie alone. It’s not really original, which I was pretty upset about. There were no real rules to speak of. The whole story was incomplete. It was just a hodgepodge of ideas thrown together. And the ending was quite abrupt. DJ did think it was fun though, but I disagreed. The only thing we both found awesome were the effects. It’s hard to believe, we know, but we were genuinely uncomfortable during certain scenes. They were nightmarish.
My score: 26. DJ’s score: 34.
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