We Summon the Darkness

This is going to be the most unconvincing 3 1/2 star review I've written. I look at that star rating and think "I didn't like it THAT much" ... but I think about the parts of the movie that I like, and there's WAY more that I liked than didn't. For instance, I love how the movie flips the script on the most standard of horror tropes, the Final Girl. In this, the girls ARE the hunters, and they are CRAZY. Alexandra Daddario and Maddie Hasson are scarily unhinged, playing "devout Christians" who believe that they can rid the world of the poison of heavy metal by killing fans and staging it to look like a Satanic ritual. I use quotes around devout Christians because, obviously, this is not sane behavior for those truly of faith, and these young women have a great handle on people who have perverted belief into a lethal weapon. It's also fascinating to see that kind of villain in a horror movie; usually, the villians are of the unholy and pure evil variety, not evil by way of corruption and perversion. Being female also makes this interesting, because you're naturally going to think "little angels" and "sweethearts", and BOY HOWDY THEY ARE NOT THAT. But -- and maybe this is a big ask in a horror movie of this kind, more focused on the action than the personalities -- the movie never touches on how they could come to believe murder like this would be an acceptable act by their God. They ALMOST tease a crisis of faith when the third girl (played by Amy Forsyth) discovers Daddario's televangelist father is not only masterminding this, but embezzling from his followers. There is gold to be mined out of both the perversion of faith, and what happens to that faith when the perversion is revealed, and this movie isn't interested in going down that road. Again, maybe I'm asking the wrong thing of the wrong movie, but it teased going down that road, and then stopped. To get more out of the formula it sets up (girls have guys trapped in the middle of nowhere in a big house), the movie keeps layering on twists and turns. The way it escalates the tension by having the boys barricade themselves in a pantry, and the girls try in vein to break in, is smart. Similarly good is the twists in the girls' plans when they get not one but two incursions: Daddario's step-mother, and then a cop. And this is after Forsyth's character has run away, refusing to take part in murder. Watching the girls try to keep things together and adjust their plan on the fly is great fun, especially as it becomes clear that 1) they can't, and 2) Daddario has become a little too kill-happy. But the twists and turns also feel like the movie is in competition with itself to one-up itself every ten minutes. It wasn't enough that the girls were the killers; there had to be a secret plot BEHIND the Satanic cult killings. And the preacher dad has to be involved, AND screwing his congregation. And they kill the cop and the step-mom. And, and, and, and, and ... it very quickly becomes a game of "and now what?" for the viewer. Another exhausting problem is how the movie can't consistently balance camp and serious moments. Sometimes, it does so to perfection. But when it doesn't, it's jarring how out of whack the movie can feel. So why am I giving it 3 1/2 snowflakes? Because this is a movie where the sum of its parts is greater than the whole. And the parts that work REALLY REALLY WORK. I did enjoy it, and I don't regret watching it. Did it need another pass through the script editor's processes? Absolutely. But there was enough meat on the bone for me to not be unsatisfied. I just sense an even better movie here, a movie that's one script-polish away from being an all-timer.