Some young documentary filmmakers head to a small town to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a woman. Police suspect her husband; he insists he's innocent. She's not the only mystery in town, however, and soon our auteurs find themselves part of sinister happenings.
A little girl once vanished here. She turned up years later, still young and freshly drowned, in a pond put in after her disappearance.
On another occasion, a different little girl turned up near the property, her origin unknown. Now an adult, she will become involved with the filmmakers, and lead them to a genuinely creepy discovery behind the walls of the crumbling rural house that stands on the seemingly cursed property.
Once the husband is cleared, another local man emerges as the prime suspect. He insists on his innocence. Increasingly, the explanation for the mystery seems to lie with things supernatural. On cue, another local insists on the existence of mysterious figures who haunt the area, beings otherworldly in nature. This tracks: everyone knows that extra-terrestrials and spectres are drawn like tornadoes to hick towns and trailer parks.
Of course, none of this is real. Howard's Mill is the latest successor to The Blair Witch Project, presented as a documentary rather than found footage. The story builds effective suspense in the first half. Fans of SF/horror/fantasy/comics, however, will see the implied explanation coming a country mile off.
And then we have the acting and the characters.
Howard's Mill is no Oscar-winner, but it features some decent performances. Reegus Flenory, for example, does well as a man haunted by events he cannot explain and which have put him under suspicion. Other performances might be charitably describe as uneven. A few might be described, less charitably, as bad.
The characters, meanwhile, act a little too much like people following a script. The film features a moment where three people are searching the area where the mysterious disappearances took place and the voice-over of the narrator calmly states, "we decided to split up in order to cover more ground."
Clearly, the characters have never seen a horror movie. They've apparently never even watched an episode of Scooby-Doo.
So should you watch this one come Halloween? I guess that depends on your taste and tolerance for a certain kind of horror film.
It's watchable and occasionally effective, but breaks little new ground. And, in an era where counterfactual idiocy shapes politics, one might feel annoyed by the online publicity. The actual filmmakers worked hard to make it all seem real. But Blair Witch was a long time ago, as pop culture sees things. The numerous planted references 'round the internet indicating this all really happened are very silly. The story, by the end, feels about as believable as The Amityville Horror or Vladimir Putin's smile. The credits clearly indicate we're watching actors perform in a scripted film.
It needs to be judged for what it is, separate of its dated advertising strategy. On that standard, Howard's Mill is.... okay.
Director: Shannon Houchins
Writers: Shannon Houchins, Kathryn Lyn
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Mark Haining as Stan Edwards
Shira Lacy as Emily Nixon
Santiago Cirilo as Daniel Lopez
Bob Daniel as Bart Houchins
Rodger D. Eldridge as Pastor Kilgore
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Justin Prince Moy as Charlie Burris
Joseph P. Scott as Mike Shamban
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Carey Van Driest as Mandy Allen
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