“A twist in tale, and the genre too,
Entertaining stuff, for me and you”

Immensely watchable flick keeps the proceedings intriguing enough, but falls a bit short of a whopee! Better than ‘Headspace’ but less masterful than Neil Marshall’s ‘The Descent’.

Writer-director & SFX-supervisor, Sheldon Wilson, spins a mysterious tale of a small town whose long-time inhabitants are in the process of relocating their homes due to the completion of a dam, and that includes the Sheriff and his staff of two. Things turn weird on the day of their departure.

It all starts with the appearance of a naked young boy at the sheriff’s office. He is carrying a hunting knife, and seems to be oozing blood from every pore of his body. A bloody trail leads to the surrounding woods where quite a few disappearances have taken place in the past. The fingerprints & blood samples from the boy point to several different people and bloody messages keep popping up all over the town. That’s not all - seems like similar things are happening at other places too. Nothing is at all what it seems in this twisty little take on the horror genre.

Although made on a restrictive budget, the film is technically polished, with excellent lenswork and razor sharp editing to boost the pace. Music complements the tech wizardry at every turn followed by commendable SFX. Actors are neither A-listers, nor cult-material but they get the job done. Director Wilson displays a huge improvement from his debut vehicle ‘The Night Class’, and displays a flair for the horror genre.

Where the film falls short is in it’s climactic disclosure which stretches the fabric of credulity to the point of a tear, and leaves you with a few groans… but just a few. Another aspect going against the film is it’s title - which comes very close to sounding like Danny Boyle’s directorial splash. It makes the film out to be a wannabe, and that’s quite unfair.

Overall, highly recommended for the DVD crowd.

MPAA RATING: R for strong violence and gore, nudity and some language.
DURATION: 97 Mins.
CAST: Timothy V. Murphy, Stan Kirsch, Lindsey Stoddart.
DIRECTOR: Sheldon Wilson