This is a low budget indie horror film shot on location in Athens and
Marietta, Ohio, employing many actors and actresses with limited film
credentials.
The story centers around Laura, a young woman who delivered a baby a
few years earlier then gave it up for adoption. The adoption didn't work
out well for the baby. The first couple who adopted him were religious nuts who determined that the baby was evil because of his
mother's sinful ways. They gave him up and, worse than that,
placed a curse on him. It was a rather effective curse at that, because the baby's
next stepfather left a loaded gun on a table and ... well, you can use
your imagination.
Unfortunately for the baby and everyone in Athens, Ohio, the curse was
not the kind that expires upon death. It was one of those eternal curses
and, hoo-boy, is that dead baby pissed off about that. He is now using his
dead baby ghost powers to rise from the dead and get revenge on all three
sets of his parents. He is able to do this because he can completely take
over any human body, and after he does so he uses that body's familiar and
trusted countenance to get near his potential victims, then rips them to
shreds with sharp objects. Although he is trapped inside a normal human
body with no superpowers, he is more or less unstoppable because if his
potential victim turns the tables and kills him, he just moves to another
body, and if his attacker manages to bind him somehow, he just commits
suicide with that body and moves on in that manner.
After some initial confusion, Laura finally figures out what's going
on, but of course nobody will believe her, much to their eventual regret,
so the body count multiplies quickly. The only really intriguing element
of the film is the mystery of how Laura can defeat such an apparently
undefeatable juggernaut.
The micro-budgeted production is a typical straight-to-disc effort, only
72 minutes long, with minimal character development, mundane dialogue, and
performances which are sometimes weak enough to break the fourth wall. On
the other hand, the direction is not so bad. The grey ambience of a
Northern winter and some spooky music combine to lend an ominous tone, and
some of the scenes are edited effectively enough to maintain the
appropriate amount of suspense while the ghost baby lurks somewhere in the
shadows. It's not a very good film, but given that it comes from a
first-time director, it's good enough to make you wonder what he might do
with some money, a decent script, and a competent cast.
On the guilty pleasure genre scale:
(1) The gore is insignificant. There's some blood, and a knife
occasionally penetrates skin on camera, but it's basically done in the
1970s style, and not with modern explicitness. I doubt that they had the
budget for convincing gore effects.
(2) On the other hand, nudity is within everyone's budget, so there's
some nice skin in this film. (See the nudity report for details.)
Given a decent effort by the director and some clear nudity, I'd call it
a minimally watchable genre film. Mainstream viewers should stay away, but genre buffs
will probably find some scenes worth
watching for one reason or another. I, for example, enjoyed Jaime
Whitlock's nude scene.
