Snakes, crows, wolves, coyote and buffalo are sacred animals to multiple native tribes. They act as figures of power, healing or messengers between people and the spirit world. They are revered and respected.
Yet this movie portrays them as demons, figures of harm and evil. It's akin to giving Jesus vampire fangs and making him posses a house and terrorize a family. If McLean had done any kind of research or had any kind of tribal expert act as a consultant, he would know that.
Equally as stupid/offensive is the fact that the script says the animal demons bring out the darkness in people, exacerbating the family members' autism, bulimia, alcoholism and infidelity.
The movie doesn't adequately build the family's characters, but instead gives them these conditions as a substitute for personality, exploiting the conditions for sensationalism hoping it will cause the audience to care about/identify with them. It lumps these conditions into the same basket as if they're equivalent and uses them to try to "say something", but it's just a problematic jumbled mess.
The "Hopi" healers they bring in are hispanic and speak Spanish. If you can get Kevin Bacon but can't get one native actor to star in your movie that has a major native plot, you either didn't try to cast one or no native actors wanted to be in it and that says something.
Just poorly conceived, poorly executed ideas. What's most frustrating is that the central cast was solid and the technical execution of the haunting effects was pretty good. If the script hadn't had so many issues, the movie had the potential to be good.
There's a lot of potential for Native American horror and the things it could say, if people could get beyond the Indian Burial Grounds, cursed objects and skin-walkers.
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