I wasn't familiar with the 2025 movie "Candlewood" from director Myke Furhman prior to sitting down and watching it. And the movie's synopsis definitely sounded interesting enough.
While the storyline in the movie wasn't boring, I have to say that I found it a bit confusing, because I didn't really understand what was going on. It felt like writers Joseph Patrick Conroy, Victoria Flores-Argue and Myke Furhman had written parts of the movie independently of one another and without knowing what the others were writing, and the end result was a bit of a disjointed and erratic script. It wasn't really a scary movie at all, so that was sort of disappointing.
"Candlewood" didn't bring anything new or innovative to the horror genre, and it was somewhat lacking in coherency and the scare department, which made for a bit of a dull viewing experience.
The entire cast ensemble in the movie were all new faces for me, which is actually something that I do enjoy whenever I sit down to watch a movie. And I will say that the acting performances in the movie were good.
The movie wasn't rich on special effects. In fact, there was hardly any effects in the movie. Oh, and I absolutely love how the father could hold a shotgun in one hand and fire it without a shred of recoil. I guess the writers wasn't familiar with the physics of firearms.
There are far better and scary horror movies out there, for sure. But I will say that "Candlewood" certainly was a semi-watchable enough movie for what it turned out to be. But it is hardly a movie that warrants more than a single viewing.
My rating of "Candlewood" lands on a generous four out of ten stars.
