An effectively eerie, straight forward supernatural horror film from Eduardo Sanchez, co-director of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, and founded in Chinese myths and legends. It’s set during “Ghost Month”, a period of festivities and superstition, when the locals leave live animals outside their homes as “offerings” so the dead don’t bother them. Couple Amy Smart and Dennis Chan are honeymooning in China and get lost when their driver disappears. Sinister portents such as a car covered in goat blood, incantations performed by locals and a fleetingly seen naked guy in the road bode ill for their upcoming experiences.
Sanchez, who also directed the underrated and interesting ALTERED, employs many of the same tropes and techniques that made BLAIR WITCH so memorable. He again traps increasingly fraught, bickering protagonists in alien territory and in total darkness. Sanchez is listed as one of the camera operators and although the movie is conventional in its approach, the camerawork is handheld, and the darkness is realistic, tough-to-follow darkness rather than over lit MOVIE darkness. Antoine Cora, credited on BLAIR WITCH, is partially responsible for this movie’s oppressively sinister score and minimalist sound design.
This genuinely scary movie pares down its back-story even more than BLAIR WITCH and includes only brief bookends in natural light : the rest unfolds in unremitting darkness over a single night. It’s much more overt in its horrors than the movie that made Sanchez rich : there are outright jump scares, a dream sequence and some fleeting gore. The naked “demons” are, nonetheless, are depicted either out of focus or very briefly glimpsed via headlights, cell phone lights or moonlight.
This confirms Sanchez’s ability to make a simple yet satisfying scary movie, with a sympathetic lead, various spooky sequences and a low key but haunting final scene.
– Steven West
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
