And it's a tricky one, because the body has been emptied, shredded from the inside-out ('Where did the bones go?' The sheriff asks the spectacularly douchey coroner played by Wesley French.) Luckily, the ID turns up nearby - the body belonged to one Cole Parsons (Adam Kenneth Wilson), 'THE ELECTROMAGNETIC TSAR OF OZARK UNIVERSITY' , the Oklahoma Times proclaims. I shit you not. He'd rented out a cabin in the woods nearby some time ago, after his daughter disappeared mysteriously.
So the sheriff contacts Meg (Emily Alatalo), the last person to see TETOOU, who is, awkwardly, also the sheriff's estranged girlfriend. She doesn't have a lot of info, but agrees to take him, and the douchebag coroner, up the river to TETOOU's cabin.
Hold on a minute - Involving Meg kind of makes sense, she knows the way. But why the hell does the coroner need to go to the site? Especially when it's established they can't stand each other? Well, as it turns out, he was Meg's previous boyfriend. So yeah, he's literally only there to provide some conflict.
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| I appreciate you, wall-dude. |
TETOOU's cabin is the expected semi-derelict deathtrap, full of scientific doodads and doors that mysteriously close on their own and stains that shift while people aren't looking. A couple of unexpected guests arrive, um, unexpectedly, and it turns out that, shock!, TETOOU was experimenting with things wot mens wern't ment to fiddle, and soon there are people wearing their insides on the outside invading our protagonists' personal bubbles.
It starts out pretty engaging - the mystery seems cool, and I like the procedural vibe it carries for a while. Hawco is pretty good, and he's got more chemistry with his aide than with his girlfriend. But as the weirdness ramps up, it completely fails to develop properly, becoming more of a collection of horror moments than a coherent existential menace. As presented, the film is closer to a pretty rote body snatchers yarn than the cosmic horrors that it promises. scriptwriter Ian Weir, working from a book by Nick Cutter (An Audible Original! the credits specify) fails to develop the premise into anything interesting, and the same goes for the belabored relationships between the characters.
Guns n' Roses guitarist Slash has a prominent credit as an executive producer and helped compose the excellent opening theme, which I guess is what's going to bring a lot of people to the movie. It's not clear if he's involved in the rest of the soundtrack, as the film actually attributes most of the songs to James Zirco Fisher. The cheesy guitar noodling when the film gets a little sentimental is a bit much, but other than that it's a pretty decent, if a little uneven horror score that does all right by the scenes it accompanies.
Director Rodrigo Gudiño makes good use of a low budget; The film is distributed by Raven Banner, and from my experience they tend to value good-looking films. All the actors are at least professional, with Hawco the clear standout - the rest don't really get all that much to do.
Effects-wise all the gore is strictly post-mortem, but it's pretty good, the monsters are cool and there's some agreeable weirdness like a wall dude who unfortunately appears just the once and completely fails to influence the movie in any way; Just some creepy imagery, carry on. On that vein, someone later puts on random cultist robes, because by Cthulhu this is cosmic horror so we got to have at least one cultist here. Even if it doesn't make the slightest lick of sense.
If I were feeling mean, I'd say that other than the decent acting and production, it's more Garth Marenghi than H.P. Lovecraft. It's not that dire, obviously, but... well, it's still pretty bad.
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