★★★☆☆
Two friends on the run take refuge in a roadside antiques shop run by Adrienne Barbeau: out of the frying pan, into the fires of hell.
Tyler Savage expands his award-winning 2023 short to feature length, and the seams occasionally show, but the pulpy pleasures remain. Rose (Lilimar) and Makenna (Lovie Simone), two self-destructive best friends, accidentally kill their potentially rapey drug dealer and bolt, washing up at a roadside antiques shop where the chipper Betty (Frightfest fave Adrienne Barbeau) offers refuge and proves anything but the sweet old lady she plays. What starts as a girls-on-the-run crime thriller switches gears into an ominous mystery with a horror secret at its core, as the pair are caught between the criminals still hunting them (and the big bag of accidentally purloined cocaine in their car) and the far stranger forces gathering below the barn.
Barbeau relishes every note of a turn that’s equally inviting and menacing, and Lilimar and Simone have terrific chemistry – Simone’s comic timing is the secret ingredient in the mix. Xander Berkeley, Will Oldham, and Gunner Willis as Betty’s gentle-giant grandson round out a strong ensemble.
Savage plainly loves the genre, with a Cabin in the Woods affinity to how he plays with convention, and shoots the Kentucky backwoods with a cosy warmth that turns to chills later on. The catch is the runtime: this is a short’s worth of idea stretched to a feature, and turns a little repetitive in the middle. The third-act swing into cosmic territory will divide, the ending a touch underwhelming after the build. But as a watchable crowd-pleaser with a game cast and a wicked streak, it’s a good night out. And it’s always worth seeing Barbeau bare her teeth.
Oddities played at Tubi FrightFest in London.