Visiting his family for the holidays, a man and his girlfriend try to ingratiate themselves despite his reluctance to reconnect with family, but when she begins acting strangely they eventually find she's been bitten and turned into a weredeer forcing them to find a way to reverse the condition to stop her rampage.
This was a rather fun cheesy indie effort. One of the better features here is the enjoyable setup that provides this with a fun and cheesy enough starting point. The initial meetings with the family that continuously piles on the cliches of the embarrassing backwoods family that he's extremely reluctant to get back home to, their games, and their general relationship with each other all point to an equally effective picture of a well-meaning family that can upset a more city-preference lifestyle to get this going. With this in place, the film's descent into creature feature territory is rather enjoyable. From the opening ambush of the hunters that captures the whole thing from the creatures' point-of-view to the fateful encounter with the deer in the woods that turns her into one of the creatures over time, this all provides a generally fun and cheesy setup to be had here. This is just as much to do with the serious tone of this section compared to the more comedic aspects found in the earlier segments. That leads into the general fun of the second half where this one goes more into the comedic side again with the attacks featured here. Opting for a series of cheesy encounters within the woods where the unsuspecting family is forced to confront the transformed creature in the woods which provides a slew of goofy, gory setpieces, these scenes playing out in a siege-like narrative while doing so is a generally fun time here. These elements all provide a highly enjoyable and goofy indie-style creature feature even though there are some minor issues here that aren't too big. Those, though, are generally centered around the film's obvious low-budget origins and limitations as the unmistakably indie vibe from the presentation to the atmosphere and the one-location setup obviously feature prominently and keep this one front and center about those factors from the offset. As well, there's little here about how the curse works and the mechanics of the transformation are all speculation and inferred without saying anything which is what holds this back.
Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.
