This film starts with a somewhat basic opening, matter of fact it is pretty much exactly the same as Ghostbusters Afterlife. A woman takes her two daughters to a new state to move into the home they inherited from their recently deceased family member.

The daughters (Beth and Vera) have a pretty significant sibling rivalry going on. Vera is certain that mom loves Beth more than her and takes it out passive aggressively (and sometimes aggressively) an Beth. The house they inherited is creepy in ways that would make anyone turn around and say lets stay at a hotel and come back in the morning. Backing up a bit, on the drive they are passed by an ice cream/snack type of truck. This vehicle stalks them to the gas station and then to the new home. The horror movie starts when the occupants of that vehicle launch a home invasion. A woman and a behemoth of a man enter, the man going for the girls and the woman after the mother. Mom unleashes her inner Sarah Connor as she goes to town on the attackers. The movie then jumps about 10 years to Beth as a successful horror writer who gets a call from her sister in distress causing her to go back to visit mom and Vera. Jump to the bottom Spoiler Alert to get more of the story, but be warned it is a Spoiler (hence the warning and name.)

This movie was a random viewing for me, and I was thoroughly entertained by it. I was very disturbed to learn that one of the daughters (actress Taylor Hickson) was horribly disfigured in an on set accident making this movie. It is highly likely that you will see a different cover image for the movie with a shorter name, but given the accident I couldn’t bring myself to use that cover image.

The writer/director of the film is Pascal Laugier, the same man who did Martyrs. An amazing work I should do a new review of for this site.

I feel good giving this 7 stars. Worth checking out even if some parts of it did feel formulaic. Unfortunately, it is leaving Netflix at the end of April, so not sure where it can be streamed after that.

SPOILER ALERT SECTION

When Beth goes back, we see Vera is massively broken and never recovered from the incident. But some things don’t add up. Why on Earth would the mother stay there with Vera? The trauma of the environment would seem terrible for Vera. And so many of the weird decorations are still in place. As it plays out we learn that mom was no Sarah Connor. She attacked the woman intruder and was beaten down and killed as Beth watched. This broke Beth, and she created a fantasy future for herself. The two of them were still trapped and being tortured and abused by the intruders, Vera was actually the one who was sort of ok and trying to keep her sister ok. This was a WTF moment I had not anticipated. Don’t get me wrong, after Beth got “back home” things seemed out of place and I began questioning what happened. But earlier when mom took them down, I believed it all. Makes for a very intriguing story as it evolved. You can absolutely feel a degree of respect and homage being paid to the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre here.