- Directed by Patrick Rea
- Written by Patrick Rea
- Stars Sarah McGuire, Laurie Catherine Winkel, Paige Maria, Patrick McGee
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 25 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6YSxuwGNjE
Spoiler Free Judgement Zone
It’s a low-budget outing that has plenty of human drama with some external horrors to deal with as well. Opinions are split, with Horror Guy Kevin liking it more than not and Horror Guy Brian not liking it much at all.
Synopsis
Amy and her son Adrian wake up on the floor of a convenience store. The police show up, and they leave. Credits roll.
They go to a motel, but the clerk says they need a credit card. He makes an exception, and they go up to their room. She goes into the bathroom and pulls up her shirt; she’s got a big cut. In the morning, they go to a nearby diner, and Amy knows the waitress, Jenny, who gives them a ride to where they’re going.
Jenny mentions that all the local teens throw parties and do seances in the front yard of Amy’s new house. This was her parent’s house, and her father had just recently died. “Murderer” is spray painted on the wall inside. The place is a mess inside, and we get a cleaning montage.
She goes into the basement, where she finds candles and a pentagram. She thinks it’s the teenagers who broke in and did all this. Adrian asks, “Is she going to find us?” “No, no one can find us here.”
A woman goes to the convenience store with a photo of Amy and Adrian. She’s looking for them. She stabs a guy in the parking lot for catcalling her.
Back at the house, Adrian goes down into the basement alone and lights all the candles around the pentagram. Some weirdness occurs, and he gets locked in the basement. He tells Amy, “There’s someone down there,” but there isn’t. We get a flashback to young Amy looking down at her mother, murdered in the bed.
Jenny comes by and asks if Adrian knows what happened there. Jenny asks who they’re running from; it’s Judith, Adrian’s other mother, and Amy’s former girlfriend. They adopted Adrian together, and then Judith got abusive. That night, Adrian sees someone inside the house, but there’s no one there when Amy arrives.
Amy teaches Adrian how to shoot, and he’s not bad. He knows that Judith is coming for him, and Amy knows it too. We get occasional glimpses of Young Amy being abused by her mother.
Adrian’s invisible “friend” beats up Amy. In the morning, she doesn’t remember what happened, and she’s mean to Adrian about it. “They were hard to see,” he explains [At this point, I’m thinking Amy has hereditary mental issues, abusive tendencies, and maybe Judith is the good parent].
Judith comes to the restaurant where Jenny works, and she asks questions. At home, Adrian watches as something with scary, bony hands starts to choke Amy and refuses to let them leave. “As long as I hold you, she can’t hurt you,” he says. She yells at him, and the fire flares up and nearly burns her.
Judith follows Jenny and beats her up. Jenny tells her what Amy told her, and Judith doesn’t seem surprised. “I know you think you know Amy, but you don’t. Whatever she’s told you about me, that’s nothing compared to the way she is.” Judith says it was Amy who killed her own mother; it wasn’t really the father.
At the house, Amy is attacked by a black zombie woman, who clearly isn’t related to Amy– it’s not her mother after all [At this point, it became completely obvious where the two women got Adrian]. Amy apologizes to Adrian afterward and tells him how she saw him and just had to have him. Amy explains that she and Judith killed his mother together and stole her baby.
Jenny comes to the door, but Amy doesn’t want to let her inside. We see the bony hand on Amy’s back. Judith pulls a gun and starts blasting, and Amy goes for her own gun. Amy gets the drop on Judith, but she wants to show the monster to Judith. The monster does not make an appearance. Judith shoots Amy, “Looks like I win.”
Then Judith sees the monster, Adrian’s mother, as she kills her. Adrian comes out of the basement and sees the woman, who kills Judith.
Jenny and Adrian leave in the morning. Adrian waves goodbye to his real mother.
Commentary
It’s a meager budget, and it looks that way too. The cinematography is good, but the acting is less so.
The characters aren’t likable. The story is paper-thin and transparent. The whole thing with who the abusive one really is was obvious all along. The only mystery was the cultists, monsters, and weirdness, and it seemed likely until the end that that was just Amy’s imagination. On the plus side, it’s all explained in the end.
Nope– I didn’t like this one at all.