Have you ever watched a movie that was so bad you forgot about it? Have you ever watched a bad movie and gotten halfway through and realized that you had seen this terrible movie movie before and just forgotten about it? Well that was my experience with this movie.

The film follows a terrible teenager named Ben, played by John-Paul Howard. He is the worst. He’s a jerk to his dad. He’s needlessly cruel to his dads girlfriend. He flirts with one girl just to ditch her for another girl. He spies on the neighbors intimate moments with binoculars. He’s just the worst, but he’s the main character, so we’re stuck with him.

Anyway this little jerk is sent to live with his dad for the summer after a pill addiction caused a terrible accident. His dads neighbors begin acting strangely after a creepy animal or woman visits the house late at night. Ben begins a campaign to figure out what’s going on.

The best part of the movie is the creepy witch creature that takes over the family. She is gnarled and dripping in oozy black ink. It’s a good design. I like it.

The actors playing the neighbors are also good. I like their performances.

That’s all the good I’ve got. Nothing else was good. The movie is blandly shot. Boring coverage and shadows that never hit full dark black. The shadows are all muddy grays. Poor lighting choices have a big effect on the atmosphere and mood of the movie. The gray shadows here tell me not to be afraid there really isn’t much lurking in the shadows except a cinematographer who doesn’t really care.

The scares are so poorly set up and paid off that it feels like the director has never seen a scary movie before. It’s really easy to do a jump scare. You play some music, turn the soundtrack down low, then have something jump out and hit a loud musical cue. This movie misses so many obvious scares. It’s like driving behind someone whose blinker has been flashing for the past 10 miles. Are you going to turn or not? This movie never makes the turn. It just keeps promising that something is going to happen.

The script is also dumb. The witch possesses the mother to eat the children, but it doesn’t always eat the children. Sometimes it takes them to it’s tree lair to eat them later I guess. And she doesn’t just take the kids from the family she’s possessing. She’ll just snatch up all the kids. So why does she take over the mothers body? Not sure.

The main character sucks. The plucky love interest is a shallow two dimensional dimwit. The dad is a cardboard cutout. The neighbors are hot idiots. Even if they were good characters, the movie is so bad it wouldn’t know what to do with good characters if it had them.

It’s so bad I forgot I watched it. It is the definition of forgettable streaming movie junk. It’s one of those Netflix movies that you will consume and will consume two hours of your time but give you nothing in the end. You can skip it.

Not my cup of tea. D