June 4, 2023

Day: 4, Movie: 4

I have a low budget horror/drama for the June Swoon 2 today. I found it on Amazon Prime awhile ago and had placed it in “My Stuff” at the streamer. The premise of the film intrigued me so I added it to the list, intended for the June Swoon.

A disgraced podcast host Allen (Jasper Hammer) received a letter from a man named Don (Ben Hall), a widower who claimed that there was a monster in the woods behind his home. Allen, hoping to use this story for redemption, took Don’s offer to come and help him kill it. However, Allen soon realized that he had gotten himself into a situation that he had simply not expected.

First of all, it was clear that this movie was very low budget, so some of the things that it has in it do not look the greatest. Some of the booby-traps set up at Don’s home were silly and should not have worked the way they did. Having said that, the look of the film is not a criticism. I am sure they did the best they could with the budget that they were afforded.

The key to this movie is the interactions between Allen and Don. Both men were broken, from different reasons and both men were filled with pain. Finding this unlikely connection between them was the heart of the film. Some of the best scenes were the ones where these two men spoke to each other. Don was clearly an unhinged individual who set up a series of bobby-traps around his house that put anyone around him in jeopardy.

The stories of Don’s late wife really helped to humanize him and definitely touched Allen.

The monster involved in this story is an enigma. We know practically nothing about it, though there are some mysterious people as part of this story who obviously have some connection to it. The monster was used very well in the film and actually did look pretty decent when we finally get a look at it. Mind you, that scene was pretty much an apparent green screen, but, again, I appreciated the effort. In the end of the film, the film has some almost mega commentary about the monster that works for the whole film.

The performances of Jasper Hammer and Ben Hall stole the show. Ben Hall especially filled what could have been a cliched character into something rich and multidimensional.

This was a quick watch and was much better than I thought it would be, better than it had any right to be. Good performances and a surprisingly effective monster story blended together into a solid movie.