A nifty, straightforward monster movie drawing on the changelings and fairies of Irish mythology. The story turns on a mycologist (Game of Thrones' Joseph Mawle) who brings his wife (Bojana Novakovic) and infant son to the Emerald Isle to study a forest scheduled to be harvested. He ignores the superstitious locals' pleas to leave, imperiling himself and his family as supernatural beings descend upon them. Imagine the flora and fauna of Pan's Labyrinth by way of the cabin claustrophobia of The Evil Dead. The film is not particularly spectacular in any single way, but it does nearly everything solidly: the acting is credible, the atmosphere is eerie, and the old-school F/X are perfectly ghoulish (and goo-drenched). It could perhaps use a longer, more slowly burning first act before absolute mayhem erupts, but this is otherwise a handsome bump in the night announcing first-time director Corin Hardy as a promising peer of Neil Marshall (Dog Soldiers, The Descent) and Ben Wheatley (Kill List, Sightseers).

B

It was a solid creature feature/body horror flick. I thought the performances from the husband and wife characters were engaging and I loved the atmosphere and dread of the setting. The creature effects were a nice mix of practical and CGI and while the film isn't as memorable as Dog Soldiers or The Descent IMO it's a very respectable effort for the genre.

[quote="David"]The film is not particularly spectacular in any single way, but it does nearly everything solidly/quote]


Perfect description for it.