Unfortunately, once the film gets down to business, once the characters reach the Backbone and stop filling in backstory and start trying to uncover the truth about what happened to Bert out in the woods, the whole thing kind of comes unraveled. As Jake becomes more and more obsessed with the idea of reconnecting with his father, and the movie tries to ratchet up the intensity, the characters race back and forth between a house, the RV, the destroyed ranch house, through the woods and back to the house to the RV to the ranch to the house again, and it’s all just too much.

They encounter some hunters out in the woods, and for a while it seems like the movie might actually be about locals trying to keep the pesky film crew off the property, but then the truck that tries to run them down keeps vanishing? It’s unclear whether this is supposed to be a ghost truck, or if maybe the filmmakers just forgot about it. Likewise, an angry squealing boar —which is possibly possessed…? by an angry Nazi? or wait, is it a murderously rapey Native American ghost?— enters the narrative for a minute or two and then just literally vanishes from the movie.

BRING BACK THE BOAR!

For some reason, the camera seems to be malfunctioning throughout much of the film; it’s chronically unable to remain focused on its subjects. For a while, in moderation, this seems like it might be an interesting decision; I can buy arguments that it’s a thematic, formal reflection of the way Jake Wade Wall spends the movie literally struggling to create a clear picture of his father’s life. But, toward the end of the movie, as everyone is running around screaming and yelling at each other and trying to escape from they-don’t-know-what, the constant loss of focus just serves to completely obscure the action. If I literally can’t see what everyone’s scared of, or even how that fear is registering on their faces, do I really feel it?

I hardly even want to discuss the end of the film. It’s one of the most egregious twists-for-the-sake-of-a-twists I’ve ever seen, and it completely soured the overall impression I had of the film. The other day I encountered something similar with The Green Inferno, and I kept telling myself that I refused to let a disappointing ending detract from my final thoughts on the film. But, forget that. This ending sucked, and in my final estimation, this movie sucks, too.