Local urban legend says this is due to an ancient witch curse and one night the curse strikes again. Now five friends must survive the night, but one of them has studied the stories and they make a plan.
Somebody took "Happy Deathday", "Cabin in the woods" and "Stranger Things" and mashed them up with winks to the audience, some teens with spiky attitude and a banging retro soundtrack. Great right?
No.
This is the dullest of by the numbers box ticking where they've looked at what audiences like in other things and assumed if you put all those things in one movie and polish them really hard it'll be awesome.
It's not.
It's not actuality bad, but it's a great example of the best that cynical focus grouped mediocrity has to offer and that's far less interesting than something a bit rough that didn't care what people thought.
There's pointless swearing. Pointless romance plot. Pointless High School Movie 101 shit that I'm sick of seeing in fucking everything. Pointless makeout scenes. Pointless backstory for the next two parts that it presumptiously assumes you'll watch. Because yes there are another two parts released in the next two weeks.
I mean if you've got nothing better to do it's inoffensive so happily fills a couple of hours and the VFX are good. I might even give the second one a chance but there are so many better things out there buried in the back catalogue getting no clicks.
I was quite irritated by this as I watched "The Tomorrow War" earlier (but didn't post about it) and that too was just as wearingly mediocre but from the "Starship Troopers" meets "Edge of Tomorrow" sci-fi polished turd factory.
Netflix and Amazon, please give your head a wobble and fund smaller productions with bigger ideas.
Here endeth the rant 4/10.