Saturday, July 30, 2022

The Protector (2022) Fantasia 2022


A young woman with a troubled past is sent to a remote town with no crime by the court. Crime stopped a decade earlier when there was some kind of massacre that put the town on the map. As the girl is settling into her new home she is gifted with a strange book called The Protector. The book concerns a god that brings peace to where ever he goes. As the young woman becomes obsessed with the book she also begins to look into the history of her new town.

This is an kind of obtuse horror mystery film  about the weird things going on in a small town.  Its one of those films were everything is off slightly and everyone is clearly hiding something. It’s a film where we lean in for much of the running time waiting for all, or at least most of the secrets to be revealed.

While the film has lots of mood and  generates genuine curiosity about what is going on, too much remains unexplained or is a bit too odd.  Some plot turns don’t seem to make sense (the alleged and debated bigfoot massacre for example). The film seems to either have been made in such away as to be a disturbing mystery to the end or too much was removed in editing, in either case, the result is a film that holds our attention until almost the very end when we suddenly realizes that this isn’t going to stick the landing and we are going to we leaving with too many questions.

Personally I was invested until almost the end when the lack of sense disconnected me. While I like what the film does with it’s mood and a bunch of not wholly likable characters, I dislike that it doesn’t pull it together in the end.

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