It’s a trio of indie flicks with various subgenres within subgenres. Does that make them more intriguing or just create chaos? Let’s find out.
THE WRAITH (2025)
This one begins with a woman getting burned as a witch and vowing revenge offspring in the 1940s. WHAT? We also learn later that the sheriff at the time was Black. WHAT?
Those anachronisms aside, the film moves to 1985. Four ghost-hunting friends head to a rural home to help a couple with a haunting and the disappearance of their daughters.
The couple lets the ghost-hunting team stay in the house and leaves. The four friends begin to experience weird occurrences, but the first scare is a nightmare sequence. Sigh.
They investigate the history of the woman burned as a witch, and not much else happens for quite some time, but eventually one of the main girls becomes possessed. From that point on, things get complicated. There are plenty of horror aspects, but the plot is all over the place.
We get a scary ghost that tries to help the sole survivor, gut-munching, someone killing people, witchcraft, and a backstory that unfolds in flashbacks, but the plot about the haunting and the missing daughters is totally forgotten. Meanwhile, I was totally eating up the eye candy…
CRYSTAL LAKE (2023)
It’s unfortunate that indie filmmakers continue to try to capitalize on massive movies and franchises using a deceiving title that will perhaps get the movie watched, but will inevitably lead to harsh backlash online, thereby denying the film the chance to stand on its own laurels.
Crystal Lake not only steals its title from the infamous camp we all know, love, and in some cases worship, but the film even has a young boy named Tommy, a character named Jason, and a moment referencing a “Jason” movie tie-in to the murders that happened, which features someone in a hockey mask. Sigh.
So, with this not being a Friday the 13th film, does it stand on its own? I have to admit, I was growing bored with the film, for it’s loaded with dialogue, even if much of it is kind of campy, often controversial, and mostly sexual, but the final act completely turns the tables for an unexpected denouement that was quite refreshing and more intriguing than everything that comes before it.
A group of friends comes to stay at a cabin in the woods where there were some murders a few years before (depicted in gory clips during the opening credits). The killer was never caught, so the friends decide to start their own little investigation.
At the same time, we get scenes of two local cops on the beat and discussing the same case to fill in the details (or lack of them) for viewers.
In between talking about the murders, the friends discuss sex a whole lot, and there’s major trans/non-binary representation with one character played by one Emily Meissner. Thing is, the trans character’s identity is sort of played to be both bold and in your face, yet challenged by the other characters, which some viewers may find offensive, while others might think it’s an attempt to be realistic and balanced. I also was not able to verify whether or not Emily Meissner is indeed trans or a cisgender person playing the role.
The trans issues actually become the focus when screams are heard from the cabin, leading to the two cops showing up to check out the report. The shit really hits the fan, the film delves into how horribly trans people are treated, particularly by law enforcement, and there’s a shift in tone that does not paint cops in a good light and even delivers some commentary on headline-making cases about police brutality. So basically, the movie attempts to be highly offensive to both the left and the right. Pretty sneaky…cis (that’s a Connect Four commercial reference from the 1980s, for you young ‘uns…).
I was really feeling the out of the box approach to the final act, even if it shifted the film away from a straight-up horror concept. I just think the first half needed something more to hold viewers’ interest.
GHOST GAME (2024)
This one tries a different take on the home invasion subgenre with a bunch of twists. It didn’t work for me, and quite frankly, I was confused by the end.
A dude finds out his girlfriend and another guy take part in this video challenge in which they sneak into people’s homes and live there without the owners finding out while filming every moment.
Despite seeing video of his girlfriend and challenge partner doing something awful, the boyfriend decides he wants to participate in their next home invasion.
There’s a supposedly haunted house they sneak into with a dark, murderous past that has just been bought by a new family—a father, mother, and young daughter.
The family gets unsettling feelings around the house, and while the scenes are set up to create tension and suspense, how can it be any of those things when we know who’s hiding in the shadows? I guess we’re supposed to be on edge that the unlikable main characters are going to get caught?
While a majority of the runtime is uneventful, eventually all the twists are tossed in for the final act. Just when I thought there was a really clever twist involving ghosts (a twist that I personally think would have brilliant–probably because I thought of it), there was another twist that I not only didn’t fully comprehend, but it also negated my thoughts about the ghost twist.
