My quick rating - 4,1/10. While recovering from an abusive relationship, Joy joins her friend's therapy group on an isolated mountainous retreat. Led by a doctor with experimental methods, the group is soon forced to confront a monstrous entity. I wouldn't have minded this one as much but it took way too long to get going. The lead up encompassed a ton of character building which half the characters I couldn't have cared less about. But this is one of those movies where the "monster" also lives in their heads so we were subjected to finding out what the groups fears were. If it wasn't tagged as horror and you got through the first hour, you really wouldn't have known that there actually was a creature hunting the group. In a way, it helps but it needed a little more than dialogue to lead up to it since they more or less walked the same paths and made the exceptional scenery turn awfully boring real quick. I didn't recognize any of the cast in this one but Hannah Emily Anderson did an adequate job being the battered woman who was just trying to put "him" in the rear view mirror. In doing so, director Berkley Brady inadvertently made the film feel as though that would end up being the focal point especially after an hour of bland dialogue but after the creature does appear, then we are entrenched in the fairly typical monster in the woods flick. I am not really sure what they were running from but it was a bit unsettling to see. Practical effects are always welcome and they were used sparingly while being effective. The violence itself is minor so effects really werne't a big concern in this one. Nothing I would recommend hunting down but you could find a worse way to spend 85 minutes. I doubt you would ever want to do it again. I know I won't revisit this one on purpose.
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