Bleed (2016)

Episode 52, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw

Todd:  Hello, and welcome to another episode of 2 Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Today’s film was a suggestion by one of our listeners. It is the 2016 film, bleed, not to be confused with the 2,002 horror film, Bleed. This one just came out obviously this year by director, writer and editor, Tripp Raim. This is one of his first films. He’s done a couple other things before this, but not too much.   So, this appears to be his first venture out into the horror genre. So, Craig, had you heard of this movie before? I sure hadn’t. 

Craig:  No. I hadn’t heard anything about it, and I knew very little about it. And, other than, you know, what I saw on the screen, I still know very little about it because as hard as I tried to find info about it on the Internet, I came up pretty short. Like you said, the director is, fairly new, in the entertainment industry, I guess. And some of these actors were mildly done anything major that, our listeners would be familiar with. With that being said, with with, I don’t wanna say amateur actors. That’s not fair. All of them had credits.   But with fairly unknown actors and a a relatively new director, The the quality of the movie is is I I went in with fairly low expectations, and I think that’s a good thing. I I I I didn’t it was better than I expected it to be. Let’s just say that. 

Todd:  Well, you know, sometimes it’s good to come into a movie when you know anything about it. Right? And, then you can form your complete then you can completely form your own opinion, and you’re not influenced by anything else. And just like for the same reason, sometimes it’s good to see a movie with actors you don’t recognize, because then your vision of their character isn’t really tainted by anything that they’ve done in the past, or your preconceived notion of their personality and the kind of roles that they play. Right? That is absolutely true. And Todd be fair, some of these actors, I mean, they’ve been in things that you would recognize, just not maybe recognizable people. I think the only one who kinda jumped out to me was this Riley Smith, who played, Eric in this movie. Uh-huh. The sort of the the brother.   He has that, like you said, he has that kind of familiar looking face. And when I was going down through his profile, I realized he’s been in things that I’ve seen. Although, I I wouldn’t have been able to tell you that, you know, before or after this movie without actually looking it up. But, yeah. I mean, I thought more than anything, that the acting in this movie was pretty solid. 

Craig:  Yeah. Yeah. You know, I I we’ll we’ll get into talking about the plot and things, and I I definitely have some complaints about the movie. But, I would say that it it’s it’s pretty competent on a lot of levels. You know? I thought the the cinematography was pretty competent. I mean, sometimes, it felt a little bit like it could have been maybe a made for TV, made for sci fi, as far as quality goes. Sometimes. But other times, I thought that it was was was pretty good.   Like you said, the acting, is not bad. I mean, we’ve we’ve watched some movies with some bad performances in them before, and and that can be fun sometimes too, but that’s that’s not really the case here. I mean, the the acting is competent. I think that where most of my complaint with this movie lies with the script and the storytelling. It felt a lot all over the place to me. To me, it kinda felt like, oh, we found this abandoned structure. Let’s film lots of creepy shots, and then we’ll figure out a story later. But, I don’t know.   May maybe you’ll disagree. 

Todd:  No. I would I would actually agree with that assessment completely. You know, it’s the the cinematography really pulled me in and the acting didn’t take me out of it. So Right. It was, ultimately ultimately, it was the plot that had me scratching my head, especially by the end. And you’re right, it did feel like a little bit of everything thrown in there. Well, the plot starts out with kind of a flashback sequence to December 5, 1979, where we have a couple guys talking in what appears to be a very old backwaters town. Another thing this movie does really well, I thought, was give us a sense of place.   We did feel like we were out kind of in the boonies, out in maybe the mountains, the Ozarks, someplace like that, West Virginia, someplace where it’s not real hillbilly hickish, but there’s that element around. And it sounds like they’re talking I don’t know. You kinda have to decode and pick apart what they’re saying. I’m not really clear, but a little girl walks in and buys some candy while they’re chatting. And one of them notices a birthmark or some kind of mark. I actually thought it was a tattoo. I guess we later find out it it it’s in fact a birthmark on her arm. Mhmm.   And it’s shaped like a moon. And that is supposed to be sinister. It piques their interest. And after she leaves, the younger of the guys goes after her in a 

Craig:  truck. She says something that upsets them. It was it was difficult   for me to the accents were so thick that   it was difficult for me Todd accents time, and and then, you know, that’s not so much of an issue. But, yeah, the 2 guys, it sounded like they were just talking about rabbit hunting. I don’t know if there was supposed to be something significant about that. But the girl comes in, and I had the subtitles on, but this was on YouTube, and the subtitles are so unreliable. I mean, they just didn’t make any sense at all. So I’m really still not exactly sure what she said, but it sounded something like, Ruth is my friend. You’re gonna pay for your sinning. Yep.   She told me she wasn’t your first. And the guy says, who’s been talking these lies? The preacher? And she says, the angels. And this clearly upsets them, and and the guy won’t give her the candy that she has already paid for. So she snatches it away and runs away, and he sends the younger the guy who was upset sends the younger of the 2 after her. And and that’s just kind of the end of that flashback scene until we jump into contemporary time. And I wasn’t really sure what was going on, and I I don’t think we’re supposed to be sure what’s going on. I think it’s supposed to be mysterious, and then it’s supposed to kinda be resolved later on. But, even though there is some resolution, you know, that that char those characters pop back up, we we come back, you know, we flash back in time later in the movie.   I was never entirely clear what was going on. So maybe you’ll be able to help me out in that regard. 

Todd:  I’m not sure I’m going Todd. But you’re right. It is it is an effective, entrance because right off the bat does establish a sense of mystery, and clearly something’s not right about these guys. And of course, anytime you’re talking with a little kid in this general sense, especially when she makes a comment like that, then obviously this is some violence being directed towards children, which is always kind of creepy and you always wanna know where it’s gonna end up. So, yeah. Between the moon shaped birthmark and what she says to them and again, even them talking about rabbit hunting sounded a little brutal, in a sense. They talked about how you’re gonna corner them. And then the movie kicks off into the present day, where we have a couple, Sarah and Matt, who have moved into a new house.   Isn’t this how so many horror movies start out. Right? 

Craig:  Mhmm. When they moved out 

Todd:  of the city and into the old house in the country, to get away from it all. And things are going to turn sinister, of course. It 

Craig:  Right. Right. And Sarah, the the very I think the first time that we’re introduced to Sarah, she’s driving or she’s not even driving. I think she’s just pulled over on the side of the road, and she has a flat tire. And she’s pregnant, like, clearly in her 3rd trimester, probably going to be giving birth soon, very pregnant. And, she can’t get her tire changed, and then this local deputy pulls up, and he looks, you know, like the locals in these movies always look kinda backwoods. But he appears friendly, and he, changes her tire for her. But after he has done that, they’re talking, and he notices that she has the same birthmark, that that half moon birthmark on her neck.   And he asked her about it, and she says, well, it’s just a birthmark. And then he says something to her along the lines of, you gotta be careful around here because there’s some strange folk or something like that. Of course, you know, very ominous, you know, the warning from the locals, it’s pretty typical fair. And then she goes home, and that’s when we start getting introduced to all of the core characters. 

Todd:  That’s right. We have her husband, Matt. We have Dave and Sabrina who come in a little later. There are obviously some friends who they’ve invited over as kind of a housewarming thing, I think. And while they’re getting set up, while they’re going through their motions, ominous music comes in every now and then. It’s one of the criticisms I have of this film at the beginning, particularly, is that I think too much of it, of what we’re supposed to find scary, or supposed to find sinister, sinister foreshadowing by Mhmm. Ominous music, that just kind of slips in in the middle of these domestic scenes. Yeah.   Anyway, I think that’s a little bit of cheating because I certainly didn’t feel like there was anything ominous going on a lot of the time. Mhmm. It’s really about half an hour of just domestic type banter. When we learned that each one of these characters has some kind of special problem, they’re eventually joined by Skye, and Eric. Sky, we learn, is Sarah’s brother. I’m sorry. Eric is Sarah’s brother. Sky is a is a woman, and it’s Eric’s sort of basically Eric’s latest fling, it sounds like.   And when they come in, they are very, boisterous and happy and there seems to be some tension between Sarah and Eric. 

Clip:  When are you planning on getting home? 

Craig:  Well, this is it. Oh, come on. Don’t don’t give me that look. All right? I’m not trying to move into your big house with too many rooms. Our home is the slab that we rolled in on. That’s our home now. 

Clip:  You are gonna live in the van? 

Craig:  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, besides, we can’t really, we can’t really go back to the apartment. You know, we haven’t paid rent since, like, November. But, no. But it the walls were getting small, and it was it was, like, it was really, like 

Clip:  Jesus, it was it 

Craig:  was like wasn’t there, you know? 

Clip:  Okay. Have you thought about getting a job? 

Craig:  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don’t know. You know, it’s like life is about living, you know? Living. 

Clip:  Yeah. Living takes money, Eric. Food, gas. 

Craig:  Will be alright. I’ll always, you know that. 

Todd:  Later, Sarah gives him some cash. Matt is a doctor, which will come in handy later, of course. So they’re pretty well-to-do. Yeah, sort of. Right? They’re pretty well-to-do, and Eric is the guy who’s flouncing around. He’s the lost brother trope, again, that we find in these movies who’s come back and is going to be a burden and cause some tension between Sarah and Matt because Sarah is going to help her, and Matt is going to be angry and say, why can’t you, you know, cut loose your younger, wilder brother and help him to be more responsible? So Right. We have this cast of 6 characters who stand around and just start chatting. And Skye, at one point, takes a bath and sees a guy.   From under her water, it looks like kind of a tall bearded old pie pirate. I was thinking an old pirate guy. Ghost. 

Craig:  Yeah. It’s kind of a kind of a cross between, like, the lead singer in a heavy metal band in a hillbilly or something. Like Rock star. Like, long black hair. And and, of course, he’s he’s, like, ghostly, so he he’s got kind of this gothy makeup. I mean, I don’t think it’s intended to look like goth makeup, but that’s kind of the effect, which, I don’t know. Not terribly scary. I mean, the effect, we just see the outside of the, the the tub, and then he kind of appears out of nowhere, you know, just kind of this gaseous appearance.   And then she sees him standing over, and it’s kinda scary and, like, blood’s dripping off of him into the water. But of course, when she comes up out of the water, he’s not there. So we assume that this guy is going to be our antagonist or at least one of our antagonists that this is gonna be kind of a haunting thing, which it ends up being kind of. But again, like I said, it’s such a hodgepodge of different ideas. Like, already, we’re what? Like, maybe, I don’t know, 20 minutes into this very short movie, by the way. It’s only, like, 72 minutes or something like that. 

Todd:  Yeah. 

Craig:  And we’ve already got, like, creepy hillbillies, this potentially crazy ghost. It’s already been suggested that one of the girls, Bree, is schizophrenic, and so if she’s gonna be seeing things, we don’t know if they’re gonna be, you know, real or her hallucinations. I mean, just so many things and that’s just the beginning. Like, there’s so much more to be thrown into the mix later on, and I think it was just a little bit too much. I I really think that if they could’ve focused the story a little bit, it would’ve been a better movie. It it just seems like there’s so many things going on that by the end when there’s supposed to be a twist, it doesn’t even really feel like a twist because there’s been so much craziness happening that you expect something unexpected. But anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. Well yes.   So so we see that ghost in the bathtub. 

Todd:  It’s hard not to bring up constantly because you are confused. And I think that’s the way I felt kind of throughout this movie is a little bit of confusion and you expect a certain amount of confusion, especially in a movie where there’s gonna be a twist at the end. There are going to be things that aren’t revealed to you, and so that’s not an unusual feeling. But you really can’t make heads or tails of it for a long time, and by the end of it, I was kind of like, Oh, so that’s it? Still with some unresolved questions. And you’re right. It’s kinda funny that you get the schizophrenic in here, then there’s tension between Sarah and Matt, which I thought was a little forced. They seem to be pretty loving towards each other and very understanding to each other otherwise. But then the script throws in these kind of weird, silly moments, like when Skye gets excited in the bathtub and starts screaming.   Matt runs in, to see if she’s okay. And that upsets Sarah. 

Clip:  Hey. Hey. Hey. I I heard her scream. I went to help. I didn’t think she was gonna be half naked. I didn’t seem to mind either. Well, I was checking on our guest.   What’s your deal? I don’t know. I’m sorry. I haven’t even been really weird with the huts lately about us and the move and the baby and It’s okay. 

Craig:  And and she’s she goes off on this this monologue about seeing things in nature, and everything seems to be going by so fast, and life is so precious and fragile. It’s gone so quickly, and it’s like this moment. And I’m like, I don’t understand. Like, is she supposed to be haunted? Is she supposed to be having weird feelings? Is it just because she’s pregnant and she’s, you know, worried? And and there’s never really any answer to a lot of these questions. Yeah. You know? She appears to be having these ominous feelings, and as it turns out, she should be because bad things are gonna start happening, but why? Why is she inspired to have these feelings? And then right after that, like, she’s just looking around in this house that they have just unpacked, like, they’ve gotten there, and she finds mysterious old   book.   And, like, she opens the book and reads it, and it says, the angels came again last night. They they talked to me. I wasn’t scared. And all of these things, you know, these they’re so typical in in horror movies, but they don’t necessarily all work at the same time. And I feel like the creators, the director of the movie just thought, well, this has worked and been cool in other movies, so let’s just put it in there. It’ll be awesome. 

Todd:  Yeah. 

Craig:  And it it it just seems it it falls a little flat, and it seems a little cheap and and unoriginal, sadly. 

Todd:  Well, it’s not long after the diary, which doesn’t ever come into play again at all, and Sarah never makes mention of and apparently doesn’t read anything beyond that first page, that they’re out playing playing Frisbee in the backyard. And, oh, the Frisbee gets tossed a little too far into the woods, and in goes, Dave to retrieve it, and he runs across a grave. Anna Harris. Right. Grave of Anna Harris, dated from 1970 to 1979. And so we pretty quickly put together that this is the grave of that little girl. And it’s weird. It’s it’s if you talk about things being thrown in, the fact that there’s a grave marked with a gravestone in the back of this house that apparently belonged to this little girl who was talking with this very strong hillbilly accent, who came in looking rather dirty and disheveled when she did, buying a small handful of candy.   Are we supposed to believe that, she lived in this house? This monstrous, really nice multi storied McMansion, kind of out in the and I would think, Oh, well maybe there was another house there before, and this house was built on its land. That’s why there’s a grave kind of out in the woods because it was a little more backwater before somebody moved in and put in a newer house, except we find a diary in the closet of this house. So, you know, that can’t really be easily explained away either. 

Craig:  Yeah. It’s pretty clunky and contrived, and it just keeps going, like, there’s there’s just no there’s no flow to the to the Todd the script, to the storytelling. I mean, right from there, they’re like, oh, we found a Craig. And Eric’s like, oh, well, big deal. Who cares? Let’s go sit down around the table. So they do, like, oh, big deal. We find graves all the time. Whatever.   And then, they sit down around the table, and Eric and Skye are like, oh, by the way, we’re ghost hunters. And we’ve been to all these places all over the country, and we’ve been hunting ghosts. And like, what? Okay. And they And they’ve got, you know, like, the the voice recorder where they can record supernatural voices, and Eric has this strange, like, bracelet that has this weird symbol on it that he got somewhere else that later on is somehow supposed to be connected, and I don’t really have under any understanding of why. It’s just so much that you’re trying to unpack and process, and there’s really not much point because it in the end, it’s just it doesn’t really matter. 

Todd:  Yeah. Eric has kind of a throwaway line where he says something about how the bracelet called to him and it brought him here or something. It seemed to be a real quick easy way to shoehorn in this idea that this symbol had some power or brought them together. But again, it was so shoehorned in, and it was so throwaway that it just seemed completely contrived. And again, he doesn’t mention it again into the future. Later on, we see that symbol again a couple more times, but the connection is very tenuous. 

Craig:  He also tells this story out of nowhere. He just says that when he and Sarah were kids, there were ghosts in their house, And we get a flashback to this scene that looks very much like poltergeist with Eric, the brother, like, huddled in a corner while Sarah, presumably the sister, is being pulled under the bed by some strange force that we don’t see and we don’t know what it is. And, he says, but at the last second, we were saved. And Matt’s like, what saved you? And they’re like, butterflies. And it’s Okay. Todd story. 

Todd:  It’s still chilly. I I I came through the whole movie not really understanding that part. Did the butterflies burst out of the closet and distract the ghost or something so they could get out. 

Craig:  No idea. You know, there’s there’s a there’s a tie at the end to this story, but it’s so tenuous that, like 

Todd:  It doesn’t even make sense. 

Craig:  I don’t know. Anyway, we’ll get there. 

Todd:  Well, thanks, Sajid. 

Craig:  Oh, and then okay. The the very next thing, then Dave’s like, 

Clip:  there was a serial killer back in the seventies. Who? Newspapers called him Cannibal Craig, said he mutilated his victims 

Craig:  then ate 

Clip:  them. Some weird, satanic something or other. They caught him. Right? 

Craig:  Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

Clip:  Yeah. Creepy to know that there’s people like that in jail getting old like the rest of us. Well, not anymore. What? He got out? 

Craig:  No. No. No. No. No. 

Clip:  He died. The prison burnt down back in the eighties. It was like it was a big story around here. Something like a 100 people were trapped inside and died in their cell. We 

Craig:  need to   check that out. Yeah. We do. 

Clip:  What? Yeah. It’s a perfect night. Full moon? 

Craig:  Like, it’s just one clunky plot device after another. And, like, they literally just come one right on top of another. 

Todd:  They do. 

Craig:  And I’m at this point, I’m like, are you serious? Like, what what is this movie trying to be? Well, 

Todd:  the the hilarious 

Craig:  said that 

Todd:  the the hilarious thing is that Matt seems seems to think this is a good idea too. Matt who’s been like critical and nasty and kind of mean to Eric this whole time just is like, yeah, I’m down for it if you guys are. Yeah. And later on, that tries to get explained away by Matt and, Sarah have a little conference in the bedroom while they’re packing for this this this spur of the moment trip to the abandoned, burned down prison in the middle of the woods. And, she’s like, I don’t even know why you’re going, And he says something like, Well, I’m gonna go. I guess his idea is I’m gonna go, and I’m gonna show them that it’s nothing, and then that’s going to make Eric mature or something. He’s he’s gotta grow up sometime. And so if I go and and indulge him in this, then I’m gonna be able to prove that that he can’t see ghosts or something.   I don’t know. It it’s it’s very tenuous. Mhmm. And it’s so out of character for him. You know, he’s supposed to be the doctor, rational mind, who’s kind of upset for him, and now he seems all too eager to go on this ghost honey expedition and leave his pregnant wife behind, because she’s not at all interested in going. But but he’s gonna go anyway. So they all end up going ghost hunting, so they get out to the middle of the woods and there is this cool set piece, which, from what I gather is was an actual place. I mean, I don’t think this movie has the budget to build something like that, But, yeah, clearly, it’s it’s a real place that I’d like to see sometime.   And looks like an old burned out prison. It even has a downstairs area under the ground. And so when they get there, the first thing is, well, I say we all split up. Right. Uh-huh. And so everybody splits up and goes their separate ways, and this place didn’t look that big, but apparently it is big enough. And of course it has that underground section. So everybody’s going off in their different areas, And immediately, Sky and Eric do what Sky and Eric do best, which is start kissing and making out and flirting with each other and lighting up a joint.   While the rest of them go running around, is it Sabrina who actually walks into a room and sees a vision of, again, Rob Zombie sitting on a chair Right. With long hair. Yeah. Blood comes out of his mouth. 

Craig:  She does. Yeah. You know, we see we see that guy, like, as soon as they Sarah drops him off and as soon as they go in well, not before she doesn’t leave before Eric stops her and says, Sarah, we have a gift. Like, okay. I I don’t have any idea what that’s supposed to be about, but, we see Sarah driving away, and she’s just kinda driving along the road. She gets distracted by the, radio and sees the little ghost girl I think in the car with her or something like that. And so she flips her car. And then we cut back to, the prison, and yes, Bree and Dave are walking around, and Bree sees this guy, like you said, sitting in a chair, but she assumes that it’s her schizophrenic hallucinist hallucinations coming back, which also doesn’t make any sense because she had said earlier when she was talking about her hallucinations that she had had these people in her life up until she was this certain age, and then when she started taking medication, they went away.   So there’s no indication that she was just seeing randos all the time. Like, it seems like 

Clip:  Yeah. 

Craig:  You know, she had these particular visions. But she blames it on her schizophrenia and starts popping Thorazine like it’s Tic Tacs.   Yeah. That’s 

Todd:  Mean meanwhile 

Craig:  She’s What? Go ahead. 

Todd:  Every every time she sees a hallucination, she, like, frantically grabs for a pill bottle and pops another pill. It’s like, I don’t think that’s how medicine works. 

Craig:  Right. And if you’ve been taking Thorazine for schizophrenia since you were 8 years old, I think that you would know that. But then so Sky and Eric, like you said, are doing their thing, smoking weed, making out, and they find this weird kind of place down underground that has candles. I mean, it kinda looks like a shrine. We find several other shrines throughout. This one’s kind of mild. But they find a scary book and they read from it out Todd, which you should always do. Wait.   Just listeners, if you’re out there, if you find yourself in a really scary place, in a really scary situation, and you find a really super old scary book with, like, cult illustrations in it and stuff, Read out loud from it because nothing bad will happen. 

Todd:  Nothing bad. 

Craig:  We we haven’t seen that in a 1000000 movies before, and that’s exactly what happens. He reads something out of it.   The lost return, awakening the dead, and the end begins, drawing the devil from out of the cycle.   Hello? And it seems like something is awoken in the prison, and they all hear some big loud noise, and there’s a rush of wind. And and so Skye, when that happens, is all freaked out, and she wants to get out of there. But Eric, with his sexy eyes, is able to seduce her into having sex right there in that room. But while they’re having sex, he apparently turns into this Rob Zombie ghost that we’ve seen, and it’s this kind of violent rapey scene. And she grabs something. I don’t know what it was. She grabs something and stabs him in the neck with it. 

Clip:  Yeah. 

Craig:  And then he falls back, and he’s bleeding, bleeding, bleeding, and everybody else comes in, and Matt, the doctor, is trying to help him. And then all of a sudden, he Eric’s just fine. His whole shirt is covered in blood. And the note that I wrote down was, like, Matt just magically heals him, but appear Matt finally just Matt finally just says, it just stopped bleeding. I don’t understand. 

Todd:  Oh. And that 

Craig:  that’s just it. I mean, oh, okay. Good enough explanation. And Eric, who has just been stabbed in the neck and has been bleeding from the throat, is the only one who wants to stay and continue to look around. I mean, it’s just Well It’s it’s frustratingly nonsensical. 

Todd:  Nobody’s freaked out that she stabbed him. It’s I mean, they just pardon that. It it’s yeah. You’re right. It it’s weird. It’s weird. In the meantime, Sarah, has been picked up by a scarred cop. This is a guy who we if I think you can recognize him.   Isn’t he the same guy from the beginning? Isn’t he supposed to be the young person, the young person who went after the girl, but a little older? 

Craig:  I’m not sure. It could very well. Who knows? 

Todd:  Yeah. Maybe not. But but he’s got a whole half of his face is burned up, which is sinister, of course, because we know that they’re in a breakup, place. And they have some very, spooky dialogue back and forth. I think it keeps cutting back and forth to to Sarah and this, person. Right? But eventually, Sarah, convinces him to pull over because she faints, that she’s sick, that she’s sufficiently creeped out by him, and she runs off into the woods. And he go ahead. 

Craig:  There’s also this creepy guy sitting in the back seat. It’s a total jump stare, and it’s this guy who’s, like, they all just called the captain. And he’s very creepy and ominous Todd, and he says, like, oh, yeah. They let me ride around with them for nostalgia or something. But Oh, 

Todd:  so he 

Craig:  was real. All very yeah. I think, yeah, he was real. 

Todd:  I don’t you know, it’s so funny that that came so out of nowhere, and the driver seemed to completely not acknowledge him at all that I assumed he was a vision she kept having, that she knew was a vision because she has this gift. And he because he even had, like, this the way he was lit, you know, was kind of a glow from behind and but and in front. And at first, I thought, well, maybe he’s the vision of this preacher that, you know, they keep talking about. But you’re right. I guess he was just a guy. Actually, that makes more sense. Mhmm. Yeah.   But but less. 

Craig:  Yeah. And and yeah. Right. I mean, as sensible as this movie gets, meanwhile, the group is still back at the so you’re right. She eventually gets creeped out enough that she gets out and starts running through the woods. But the group is back at, the jail. They’ve tried to leave, but as always happens in these types of movies, somehow they’ve gotten turned around in the woods, and they just end right back where they were. And once again, they find a scary book, and, they open it up, and and it says, on seducing the soul of the newborn, the vessel will deliver the chosen.   And it’s got a picture of an infant in there and all these ceremonial symbols and whatnot. And so, obviously, Sarah’s baby is gonna play an integral part in this last you know, that’s something that’s going on, and and that’s gonna be a danger. And Eric very cryptically says, we were brought here for a reason. I can just feel it. Yeah. I don’t know. It’s it’s all it’s it’s crazy. 

Todd:  He starts lighting candles. And for a while, I thought, well, he was possessed or something, and he’s gonna start some ritual. But but that gets dropped immediately because the next time somebody runs across him, he’s somewhere else. Yeah. And then, I can’t remember who says this, but at some point, I think it’s when maybe Sky finds Eric or Sabrina finds Eric, she they run across something. Was it some bones or oh, it’s like some skin hanging from the ceiling and maybe some body parts? 

Craig:  They come across so many different things. I don’t remember what order it is, but, yeah, you know, at at one point, you know, Eric, who is the one who is so gung ho about staying there, he runs down in there. Sky runs off into the forest where she encounters all of these men with flashlights. We can’t really see them because they’re in in darkness, but, they are very ominous and threatening. So she comes running back, and because they’re now being pursued by these people who they don’t know and don’t know what they want, Matt says, Dave, you take the girls down into the cellar or into the the prison and and find a place to hide, and I’m gonna try to divert these guys. And then we just have Eric, Dave, and the Skye and Bree running around down there in the prison, and it makes no sense. They split up off from each other all the time for no good reason so that they’re on their own. And, you know, sometimes they’ll be together when they’ll see something, and that’s what will, you know, motivate one of the girls to be scared and run off.   But you’re right. They see there’s one room that has, like, a big, some sort of bone sculpture. Again, you know, very stereotypical for these types of movies. Looks like some sort of sort of satanic, ritual or something. 

Clip:  It’s like hell. 

Craig:  And then, yes, there’s another one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then there’s another room, you’re right, that had, like, what looked like human hides. Like like people had been skinned and their skin had been hung up on hooks and there were some heads in there. Sarah eventually makes her way to the prison. She gets down in there too.   She finds a room full of skulls. And none of the you know, it’s it’s all just for atmosphere. Like, there’s there’s really no point to any of these things except for, okay. We get it. It’s some sort of cult or something, but that’s it. It’s really just, oh, look what we made. It’s scary. You know? If there were purpose to it, if the story was better, those because they’re actually pretty cool set pieces.   Yeah. But it’s just like walking through a haunted it’s just like walking through a haunted house. Like, you take a look in there, and you’re like, oh, yeah. That’s scary. And then you walk on to the next room. Like, that’s you know, that might be fun for a haunted house. But for a movie, it it it feels pretty thin. 

Todd:  Yeah. And and I wanna say that it’s even before the locals come that Sarah not Sarah. I think it’s Sabrina or Sky makes a comment that says after they encounter one of these rooms and says, this is a trap. It’s the locals. This is exactly what they wanted. And I’m thinking, what trap you guys on a on a whim decided to come out here. Nobody could join you out here. It it doesn’t make sense as a trap.   Maybe it’s maybe it’s the bear trap you set in the woods hoping that in, you know, years from now, somebody will stumble upon it. But it’s definitely not exactly what the locals wanted. It’s what you wanted. You guys are the ones who chose to come out here in the first place. Right. So yeah, it’s it’s very tenuous, and I don’t know, you know, of course, Sarah gets dropped, you know, Sarah leaves that car and magic finds her way back in there, so she’s with the mix Todd. And Sarah is having these visions down there as well, and sadly, this is the only way that we really get any more backstory on this little girl thing that pops back in. Because Sarah has this gift, I guess, or is being given these visions, and we get to see like a movie played out in front of her.   We get more of the backstory of this girl, and apparently what happened with this little girl is after she was chased down, they grabbed her. The villagers grabbed her. I guess because she had this birthmark, she was significant, she was important. And they take her this cult takes her into, a barn, and, I guess they’re probably gonna have their way with her. Mhmm. Basically, impregnate her, and it’s pretty creepy. One guy says, hey, you might get lucky too. 

Craig:  Yeah. It’s super creepy, especially since she’s she looks like she’s maybe 8 or 9. Like Yeah. I don’t know if these people understand how human reproduction works, but, I think it would be fairly unlikely that a child that young would become pregnant. However, we’re dealing with supernatural satanists, so what I guess anything’s possible. The important thing that we see there in that flashback is that, Cain, this guy, we find, you know, this supposedly this mass murderer who killed all these people and ate them. This is the guy that we assume we’ve been seeing, the big scary heavy metal guy. Kane actually tries to help the little girl escape.   He’s not successful because she takes off running and ends up running out of of a window that’s, like, on the second floor, and she falls and dies. But I guess what this is supposed to be the twist, I think, is that we have thought that this ghost that has been appearing all along was malevolent and was evil and was trying to, you know, kill all these people or whatever. As it turns out, he wasn’t the malevolent one. It’s the townspeople who are the villains, and the the ghost is actually trying to help these people. But there are some things that are just completely nonsensical if that’s the case because before this, Dave, is it Dave? Yeah. Dave runs into a room and finds Kane chained to a wall, and Cain kills him, like, sends out this big burst of flame from his chest or something and kills Dave. It makes no sense with the rest of the narrative. Yeah.   If this ghost is supposed to be trying to help these people, why would he kill one of them? It doesn’t make any sense. 

Todd:  Yes. Yes. Exactly. It’s it’s it’s one of these cases of the ghost appears, and I think you’re right about what’s supposed to be the twist, and you’re absolutely right that it also makes no sense. You can sometimes forgive the idea that, well, when a ghost appears to somebody, it’s naturally going to be scary. The ghost can’t help that it’s scary because it’s dead, or it looks gross, or whatever. So it’s trying to be benevolent and helpful, but it’s being mistaken for something odd and terrifying. Except this guy really is, like, intentionally terrifying.   He kills this guy. 

Craig:  Mhmm. 

Todd:  And so he’s not really helping anything. Sarah Okay, so Sarah coughs up the Todd. Dave is dead. What? 

Craig:  Everybody gets picked off. Yeah. Everybody gets picked off in a matter of, like, a few minutes. No. But I love 

Todd:  Except for Sarah. I love the bit where, where Eric comes across the file that Dave had. Or is it a separate file? I guess it’s a separate file. The the important part 

Craig:  is 

Todd:  that these locals have scattered, police files of, Kane throughout throughout this abandoned prison, in the whole as one character says, I think we were supposed to find this. For whatever reason, I I couldn’t fathom. But anyway 

Craig:  He says it’s almost like someone left this here for us to find. Yeah. Yeah. It does kinda seem like that. 

Todd:  It does. Like, I don’t know, the prop guy? Yes. But but anyway, Skye, I think it was Skye who runs across Dave and finds that he’s dead, and so she runs back off and, encounters Eric has this file and she says, Dave is dead. And he goes, What? And she says like, he’s dead. He died. And Eric’s like, okay, but check out this file. Yeah. They just Todd reading from the file and the fact, poor Dave, poor Dave in this movie becomes you you talk about a movie littered with just tropes from other films.   He becomes that poor stereotypical black guy who you know is gonna die Mhmm. And nobody gives a crap. So you’re right. Everybody kinda starts, getting picked off. 

Craig:  The scene that you were just talking about, that was actually Sarah. Sarah and Eric peruse the file, then the locals all come in and they take off running. Eric just immediately gets shot in the head and he’s dead. So now everybody’s dead that we know of, except for Sarah, and we don’t know where Matt is because we haven’t seen him in a really long time. But, Sarah ends up back in that room, the first room where Skye and Eric had sex and and all that went Todd, and both Craig and the little girl appear to her. And Cain opens his hands and has a butterfly in it. And and he says to her, Anna had the mark. I failed her in the barn.   It ain’t happening again. So apparently, he’s gonna try to protect Sarah, and I guess what we’re supposed to believe is that somehow he he was the one that protected her when she was a kid. Like, I don’t even understand what the ghosts were that were after them when they were kids. I I I have no idea what that was all about. Yeah. But here you have the, you know, the image of the butterfly again. So I guess that was him protecting her even then. Whatever.   Makes no sense. Fine. So, Sarah so, Kane runs out like he’s gonna go fight with the the locals and and Sarah, runs out, but they get it they get her. The locals get her, and they tie her up on some sort of altar or something outside. And the captain, who we saw from the back seat of the squad car is, like, you know, drawing in blood these symbols on her belly, and it looks like, he’s gonna cut, the the child out of her womb is what it looks like is going to happen. Todd, dun, ta da, here come Matt and Kane who both come in and start fighting off the locals. Matt has like a scythe or something, and Kane can apparently shoot fire out of himself. So they’re doing all that, fighting all the people.   I I think Matt eventually gets taken down. I don’t remember if we actually see him saw him get killed, but it seemed like the implication was that he got killed. And Sarah runs off and gets to the road and this, this car pulls over and picks her up, and it’s this creepy woman who we had seen before. Again, I have no idea what her significance was supposed to be. When Sarah had had her car accident right before that, she had driven by this woman on the side of the Todd, and after she had driven by, the woman turned around and, like, howled into the woods. So we recognize her from earlier, so we know she’s probably not good. They she takes Sarah to a barn, and the original deputy from the very beginning who helped Sarah with her car is there, And Sarah’s in labor, and she’s giving birth. And the baby is born, but it’s stillborn.   And the woman says, do you want your baby to live? And Sarah has a flashback to a conversation that she and Matt had earlier on, which really has no bearing on the situation at all. 

Todd:  No. 

Craig:  And then and right. And then she says, yes. I do. And the deputy cuts her throat. She dies. We get an exterior shot of this barn that we’re in, and that’s it, right? 

Todd:  I guess was the idea that only one of them could live so the baby was born stillborn, but if they killed Sarah, then the baby would live because then the baby kinda wakes up and starts crying. And I wasn’t sure if we’re supposed to believe that was Sarah’s spirit in there or what. Yeah. You’re right. It so anyway 

Craig:  I think that we were I think that we were supposed to believe that this cult ultimately was successful in what they wanted to do. It will. Yeah. That they that they did, you know, that this baby now is whatever being they needed to have delivered from the vessel. And so it’s one of those movies where, oh, bad guys won. The end. 

Todd:  Yeah. It’s Rosemary’s baby, basically. You guys go through this movie. Oh, it’s Poltergeist. It’s Rosemary’s Baby. Oh, it’s, it’s every haunted house movie I’ve ever seen. It’s, Excess Chainsaw Massacre, Wrong Turn, 

Craig:  the Hills Have Eyes. Yeah. All of them. Yeah. So many things just thrown into a blender. 

Todd:  Well, and, you know, it’s weak. Obviously, it’s weak because it’s hard to follow. It’s weak because it doesn’t make sense because the whole Craig thing. The thing I don’t get, if it’s supposed to be Cain who visited them as kids, and Cain ultimately just wants these villagers dead, but he’s unsuccessful. Where did Cain go? Right? He’s not confined to the prison because he apparently saved Sarah and Matt when they were younger, right? And he doesn’t need to be woken up by a spell in a book to have any power because he’s been appearing to them in all these different places outside of the prison and also released some butterflies to him and Matt when some other unknown ghost was getting at them. So where has he been all this time? Why hasn’t he taken care of the villagers earlier if he could do that? Right. Okay. Maybe in order I have no idea.   Maybe in order to wake him up, and give him the ultimate power, you need to read from the spell book in that room. Okay. Fine. So that’s been done. He kills the villagers in that room, but then when the hillbillies pick up Sara outside this whole event and take her back to the barn and do this last ending scene, where is Kain now to decide decide she doesn’t need protecting anymore? Right? I mean, it just it just it just doesn’t make there’s no internal coherence to the plot. There just isn’t. Mhmm. The first half was a pretty good setup, and then it just devolved into, I felt. 

Craig:  Yeah. And, you know, like like I’ve said, you know, in terms of acting, in terms of cinematography, I’ve certainly seen worse. I’ve definitely seen worse. This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the worst horror film I’ve ever seen. Would I watch it again? No. I could see how maybe this might be something that and we’ve said this before. We’re probably getting a little old saying it, but, like, if you were having a Halloween party and you just wanted scary movies running in the background all the time. There’s some interesting visual stuff going on here, and it it’s short, and it moves at a pretty quick pace.   So for that purpose, it it it might be effective. But the the narrative is is weak Todd say the least. 

Todd:  Well, you bring up a good point. It is short, and that is that is pretty nice. It does move. Todd doesn’t get boring. It gets confusing, but it doesn’t Mhmm. Really get boring. And it moves quick enough and, you know, if you’ve only spent 70 minutes on it and you’re disappointed at the end, at least it wasn’t 2 hours. Right? 

Craig:  Right. 

Todd:  It it wasn’t even an hour and a half. We’ve seen much worse movies Right. That we’ve had to sit through for for that long. And this wasn’t Definitely. A horrible movie to sit through. The acting was pretty competent. The cinematography was very good. Even the effects, which in a movie like this can tend to be on the cheesy side or clearly computer generated, I thought were pretty effective. 

Craig:  It just They did some interesting things. That that scene that you were talking about when Sarah had the flashback and it appears almost like a movie projection, that was kinda cool. And there were other cool things too. There were a couple of effects that were a little cheesy. The initial butterfly explosion, early in the movie seemed kinda cheap, but other other than that, yeah, I I agree with you. 

Todd:  Yep. It’s just a kitchen sink kinda movie, and it didn’t have a satisfying story to it. That was, I guess, the most disappointing. And honestly, that’s really what matters whenever you’re watching anything. You can put up with bad effects or cheesy acting or whatever if the story is good. And here’s one of those clear examples of you can have everything else right, but if you don’t have a good coherent, story, it just all seems to waste. 

Craig:  Couldn’t say it better myself, my friend. 

Todd:  Well, thank you for joining us, for this episode. If you enjoyed it, please check us out on iTunes and Stitcher. Share it with a friend. Also, check us out on social media, Facebook. Our Facebook page is a good place to let us know what other films you would like us to see, and let us know what you thought of this film or any of the other films that we’ve reviewed. Until next time. I’m Todd. And I’m Craig.   With 2 Guys and a Chainsaw.