Pretty sure I saw a trailer for this movie in the Before Times and then it got the usual Covid delay. But I feel like it got another delay or two even before the shutdown. I don’t know – it just feels like I saw that trailer ages ago and was surprised the flick hadn’t already come out. But there it was at the theater for Halloween, so I gave it a shot.

The flick is set in a small town desolated by the opioid crisis and about every other crisis that you can imagine, by the look of it. Just a poor, grey, rainy backwater in the Pacific Northwest. Keri Russell plays the teacher of a disturbed boy who she wants to help. The boy has his own problems, mainly that he’s got his maniac father and innocent little brother locked in his house and he’s feeding them animal carcasses. Yum.

This is a very handsome movie. Just gorgeously grim and dark. It’s well shot and atmospheric as hell. Maybe too dark in that horror movie way where nobody has a light switch that can possibly brighten a room. But I’m pretty sure the gloom was purely intentional and not, say, a problem with the projector at the theater.

Unfortunately, I found the drama and horror of the movie a little cold and impenetrable. I just didn’t care about this kid and his psycho father nor about Keri Russell’s need to be the boy’s savior. Plus the deliberately murkiness mad it hard to engage with the horror elements either.

But, for the most part, it wasn’t a boring movie… just a rather pedestrian one in the long run. Except for the very end where they (more-or-less) reveal the movie’s creature (for which the movie is named) and Russell has to make some pretty dark choices. I liked the nerve the movie had to do some of the violence it does.

So… this is mostly a miss for me but there’s just enough here that it might work for you. I can’t argue it doesn’t look great (when you can see it) and the acting is solid. As long as you can handle a dark ending, you might get something out of it.

Score: 74