CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: MICHAEL CAISSIE / STARRING: KATRINA BOWDEN, JAY MOHR, WILL CARLSON, SPENCER DANIELS / RELEASE DATE: AUGUST 24TH

Thanks to the ready availability of cheap and affordable drones, it seems that every low-budget horror film now begins with a tracking shot of the terrain where the film will take place. While this could be seen as homages to the opening to classic genre pictures such as The Shining or Candyman, the result is more akin to padding the movie with two to three minutes of footage, allowing the film to more readily reach feature length due to a script whose plot would otherwise barely stretch to fill the necessary running time.

That summary, in a nutshell, is writer/director Michael Caissie’s new film, Hunter’s Moon. While the story is an ambitious one – beginning as a monster movie, switching to a haunted house picture, then to a home invasion film, and concluding by returning to the monster movie theme – the actual movie itself plays out as though everyone onscreen, save one actor, is barely tolerating working on it.

To briefly summarise, Hunter’s Moon tells the story of the Delaney family, who move into a home out in the country for reasons which are hinted at early on, but never explicitly addressed until the film’s conclusion. The home was the location of a serial killer (played in a thankless cameo by Sean Patrick Flannery), who was killed under mysterious circumstances himself, thus allowing the family to snag it for cheap. When the parents leave shortly after moving in to go on a business trip, some local criminals who’ve decided to rob it make friends with the three daughters left behind, only to be stalked by something mysterious which comes out of the surrounding orchard.

It sounds amazing, but the performances are astonishingly unbelievable from the get-go. As Delaney patriarch Thomas, actor Jay Mohr is so subdued as to be nearly unconscious, with a delivery that seems as though he’s channeling a very stoned Christopher Walken. Two of the three teenage daughters – Wendy (Emmalee Parker) and Lisa (India Ennenga) – are so thinly written as to be nonexistent, and Juliet is played by Katrina Bowden. She displays some minor energy, but given that the actress is 30 years old, her portrayal of a teenager seems as though it might be some sort of joke, although the movie never appears to be self-aware enough to make that kind of gag work.

It’s not until the sheriff, played by Thomas Jane, arrives that Hunter’s Moon manages any sort of actual energy or verve. Aside from the scenes with Jane, the film merely goes through the motions, steadily plodding from plot point to plot point, as if the cast and crew were just as weary of the film’s paper-thin story as those who watch it. Happily, Jane seems to relish the chance to use an accent, gleefully delivering everything with scenery-chewing joy.

When the film finally wraps up, there’s a discussion among the remaining characters wherein they engage in a Hercule Poirot-style summary of the film that just took place, explaining everything that preceded it. It’s not as though Agatha Christie is demonstrating how cleverly certain plot points were clues to where Hunter’s Moon ends, but rather the opposite, in that the film so thoroughly fails to clue the viewer in on what’s actually happening that it has to be retconned in order to make any sense whatsoever.

Neither bad enough to warrant popcorn-throwing mockery, nor clever enough to overcome its many flaws, Hunter’s Moon is merely soporific, and the time spent watching it would be better put toward just taking a nap.