jryn7’s review published on Letterboxd:
Life’s been hard for Leah (Nicole Munoz) since her father’s death. She’s taken a heavy interest in the occult and gathered with a group of friends with similar interests. And her mom (Laurie Holden) has taken up with multiple bottles of wine, and their relationship has deteriorated. One day Mom announces they are moving further north to a forest cabin since she needs a fresh start. Proving that you take your traumas with you, she tells Leah it’s still hard to move on with Leah around looking like her dad: “if I could just rip off your face!” Faced with these Mom pep talks, losing her friends and school, and a potential boyfriend, Leah does what any teenage girl would do: goes in the woods and casts a spell summoning a demon to kill Mom. But when she and Mom begin to reconcile, she finds out like Lance Henriksen in Pumpkinhead that it’s hard to call off a curse.
This is well shot and acted - more moody than scary. There are a few good demon shots, particularly one in the trees right after Leah casts the spell and walks home. But Leah is really hard to root for - she seems incapable of communicating clearly with anyone, and even when given precise instructions how to get out of her predicament and the warning that the demon will lie and deceive her, she still messes things up. As a psychodrama on mother-daughter relationships it’s good, but the horror was too low-key and predictable for me coupled with the “I’m with stupid” factor.
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