If you go down to the woods today, be careful what you bring back.

IFC’s newest horror film The Wretched follows two young families, neighbors in a small U.S. coastal town who have their normal lives terrorized by an ancient evil that has resided in the surrounding woods.

A rebellious, misbehaving teenaged Ben (John-Paul Howard) is sent to live with his father Liam (Jamison Jones), separated from Ben’s mother and awkward at first the two manage to maintain a normal father – son relationship with the only blip being that Liam has a new girlfriend Sara (Azie Tesfai).

To keep his son’s usual teenage angst under wraps and help him develop his own life in this new environment he has found himself in Liam gives Ben a job on the local mariner.

A relationship between Ben and another employee, Mallory (Piper Curda) begins to develop.

Ben’s usual teenage life drama’s get a sudden distraction when he notices his neighbors suddenly begin acting strangely after a hunting trip where they shot and killed a deer.

As Ben begins spying on his neighbors and after their frightened young son tries to flee the family home, he starts to investigate what is happening.

Bringing Mallory in to his wild suspicions that there’s something not right Ben discovers that a thousand year old evil in the form of a Witch that can possess people by living under the persons skin has taken control of his neighbor and it knows Ben is on it’s trail.

Soon Ben’s nearest and dearest are under threat, aswell as himself.

The Wretched fuses classic and at times cliche horror with a new level of creepiness.

Using a unique narrative the film has managed to stay in a class of it’s own while making it one of the must watch horrors of 2020.

A frightening ride, a thrilling watch.

The post The Wretched (IFC Films – 2020) Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Based on the acclaimed Jerzy Kosiriski novel, The Painted Bird is a meticulous 35mm black and white evocation of wild, primitive Eastern Europe at the bloody close of World War II.

The film follows the journey of The Boy, entrusted by his persecuted parents to an elderly foster mother.

The old woman soon dies and the Boy is on his own, wandering through the countryside, from village to village, farmhouse to farmhouse. As he struggles for survival, The Boy suffers through extraordinary brutality meted out by the ignorant, superstitious peasants and he witnesses the terrifying violence of the efficient, ruthless soldiers, both Russian and German.

In a defining scene, one of the peasants shows The Boy the flight of a captive bird, whom the man has painted and then released back into its own flock. The bird is immediately ripped apart because it is different from its fellows. That lesson reinforces all The Boy already knows and will soon know better: difference is fatal.

But there are rare moments of compassion: a German soldier spares The Boy, a priest intervenes on his behalf, and finally The Boy becomes the protégé of a Russian sniper, who is kind to the child, but ruthless with the enemy. And there are signs of love. The Boy is seduced by an older girl, finally re-discovering the comfort of intimacy, only to realize that he has been used.

When he is miraculously reunited with his weakened father at the end of the war, The Boy is cold and impenetrable, hardened by his ordeal. Yet we can still glimpse something of the old, sensitive Boy behind the eyes of the new.

Perhaps there is hope.

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