After some opening scenes in different time periods which mention experimental drugs and disappearing children, we jump to current day Happy Valley. David arrives home after serving overseas and his family celebrates by pulling out a cake. The kids are told to eat as quickly as possible because it’s bed time. This begs the question, why not celebrate tomorrow? Also why are they going to bed when it’s light out?
The next day David and his wife get together with their friends and discover all their kids are suffering from nightmares. They decide group therapy would be best, even though the kids are different ages and don’t all have the same fears. Will the kids be comfortable being vulnerable in front of their friends? The parents are not concerned.
The child counselor is super creepy and resembles Bigfoot. He lets the parents know when the counseling session is over, they can pick their kids up in the park across the street. Nothing suspicious about that. One of the parents says the children’s behavior is getting worse after what the counselor is serving them and the counselor counters he’s not serving it anymore. Wait, I thought this was the first session.
Meanwhile in another part of town, a group of teens talk about how hungry they are and a creepy delivery driver brings one styrofoam take out container. Why didn’t everyone order food if they’re all hungry? The guy who ordered take out goes outside to eat while his girlfriend watches. I’m not sure why we are focusing on these teens.
Soon children start to disappear and the movie devolves into the worst attempt to arrest a suspect. A line of detectives with guns drawn and the reaction time of a sloth step en masse into a garage. Then a small child hits the button for the garage door and it slowly closes behind them, locking them in.
The movie is a low budget film that’s really disjointed and sometimes you’ll wonder what is happening. The audio is inconsistent, like when Timmy is in the counseling session but sounds very far away. There are off putting close ups with strange framing. At other times, the principle actors heads are cut off, partially or fully. Sometimes the color is washed out, which was definitely a choice but it’s not clear why. There are even some scenes where actors trample on each others lines.
One of the oddest moments is when the adults can’t believe another adult is someone they went to grade school with because he used to be such a small kid and now he's huge. You could say that about almost anyone you hadn’t seen since they were little.
This is one of those movies where the best thing you can say is they had an idea and put the effort into actually making the movie.
Ridiculous dialogue
It’s like demons versus God for me. So I just tell him say a prayer and turn the light on.
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| The newspaper article which misspells bizarre |
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| The choice to not include any characters entire head in the scene |
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| The delivery boy with the hand drawn name tag |
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| The delivery boy continues standing at the door, plus everyone said they were hungry but this is all they ordered |
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| The creepiest child counselor ever |
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| Out of focus and odd framing |
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| Wait, this a religious movie? |
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| More odd framing on close ups |
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| The family wave to well wishers |
