I was suckered in by the premise... although sadly for most part it fails to meet those expectations. How to classify the film? A homegrown micro-budget, indie found-footage crossed faux-documentary with cult group influences, and creature-feature elements. I know, it's a mouth full. It does draw you in, yet, doesn't go anywhere out of the ordinary to compensate for its meandering nature. Not a complete misfire, and nothing to do with its tiny budget (although it shows in how they present the story), but the familiar plot is a slapdash of well-worn ideas scrappily pieced together, which goes nowhere fast.
Our protagonist Kyle Cole, along with his girlfriend return back to his family home a decade later to face to the scorn of his home town in the wake of his beloved older brother's death, which still plagues him to this day. He wants closure from these demons, so he agrees to film it with a cameraman to help document the process. However we learn there's something much more to his return, as there seems to be a worrying connection between Kyle, and a local cult leader (where there are stories that this man can raise the dead) that sets something unstoppable in motion.
Don't go in expecting much in the way of monster-action, unless you fancy off-screen growling and stomping. We don't see the beast come to play until the last slaughter packed 20 minutes, where we catch glimpses amongst shaky camera movement. Chaotic is best to describe it. There are minor touches of gore, nothing special, and practical monster FX, that's if you can make out what you're seeing.
What you'll find is that the main attraction really does lie on building character, or at least a script trying to. It's overly talkative, statically drawn out and wants to psychologically breaks down the situation. Mystery stays thick, surrounding Kyle's personal baggage, and his involvement with this cult group. What starts off shady eventually begins making sense (well not in a spell-it-out-for-you manner) leading to a bleak resolution. Then there's the inserted interviews covering what happened to Kyle before, and after the horrific accidental death of his brother. We hear from different people in the town. Quite a stop and go experience. Making it more palatable were couple of the performances. Austin Madding is stably fine as Kyle, but namely Bill Obsert Jr's creepily understated cult leader and Joshua Mark Robinson's unhinged hick disciple keep you interested. At times I had trouble with the audio, specially understanding dialogues, and there are some questionable scenes of how can they still be video filming/or who's now filming.
