After discovering a dead body, a sheriff in a small-town community is tasked with looking over the person until their family can arrive to claim it, but the longer he remains on the job the more he comes to believe a demonic curse has come to pass over him and must stop it from consuming him.
This was a lot better of an entry than it should've been. The main aspect to be had here is the wholly intriguing and somewhat chilling setup that provides this with a rather engrossing immersion into the story. The discovery of the body and conditions upon which they're tasked to remain there looking over it is a simple-enough task with the appropriate sense of unease being alone like he is while the supernatural activity begins ramping up slowly and ominously. From the hints to his childhood that suggest something knows who is specifically and is targeting him for unknown reasons, the seemingly innocent ideas here slowly indicating that something isn't normal and that he's been subjected to an entity of some kind all come across rather nicely here. This provides the film with a great building block for a solid string of impressive and somewhat chilling supernatural encounters. The first moments he's on the job, the body coming to life and leading him into the woods where he does battle with a strange being lurking in the shadows of the trees offers a wholly impressive series of mini-confrontations spread throughout that get things rolling nicely. The later hallucination involving the demonic spirit coming to torment him while playing in the woods has a great feel to it much like an encounter with the robed figures in the cabin. The series of exploits he faces while alone at the cabin where the demons continually taunt and torment him with flash images of his family tempting him or the other demons acting as those he knows interacting with him to influence unwarranted behavior to have a generally unnerving and sinister atmosphere to them and set the stage for the finale which is rather gruesome and bloody with how it all comes together. These elements all manage to provide quite a lot of intriguing qualities to this one. There aren't too many flaws to be had here but this one does have some issues. The biggest drawback to this one is the rather convoluted setup that goes on here which manages to introduce way too many storylines for this kind of film. The idea of the cop staying there alone being tormented by the spirit who finds the cause of it to be related to the trauma associated with his past is already rather confusing and feels too stuffed, yet the film continually piles on a series of twists and turns with the demonic entity continually toying with him trying to bring something dark and hidden to light which just makes for a generally confusing time here. As well, that also causes the other secondary flaw with the running time trying to fit all these elements together that it can feel a bit too long trying to cram these elements into a rather engaging supernatural tale. The cutaways to the interviews in the prison cell don't help and only hurt the flow even further, as an opening and closing round of comments would've been fine which are pretty much what really hurt this one the most.
Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.
