Indebted to a vicious mob boss, a retiring hitman is blackmailed into taking on one last job to clear himself of the debts and sets off to the remote house where his target is held up, but when the whole affair is found to be a setup for a demonic sacrifice must save himself and their targets.
This was an intriguing if somewhat flawed feature. Among the better features here is the way this one tends to work through the rather surprising setup that works quite well at establishing a solid old-school atmosphere. The time-honored trope of the retiring hitman pulled into doing one last job only to get caught up in something beyond his experiences and get dragged into a genuine supernatural fare is a fine way to get this going as it starts off on a lot of fine elements here. The use of the gangster-drama first half to spell out his reasoning and motivation to take on the case which is a blackmailed way of ensuring he gets out to the house and undergoes a series of revelations and reveals about everything when he arrives is a fun way to get this going as the different setup at first allows the genre fare to come off quite a bit better when they occur due to this. The other big factor to be had with this one is the final half where the film starts to get far more interesting than just spending time with him doing nothing. The introduction of his mission being interrupted by the cult looking to sacrifice them for their demonic hosts is a solid twist and hsa a lot to like with the slow build-up to get there offering some solid bits of supernatural shenanigans to highlight that impending twist when they're revealed in their glory. Featuring a lot of solid encounters in the house and the surrounding areas to show the impact of the demonic beings coming to fulfill the twist nicely, there's plenty to like here with the atmospheric setting helping to give this a great touch overall to help hold this one up overall. There are some drawbacks to this one which holds it back. The biggest detriment to this one is the incredibly sluggish and draining tempo at the beginning which takes so long to get going that the film is half over before anything really happens. With the majority of the first half spent on the mob bosses getting him to accept their blackmailed mission and send him off to the mission is just dull and not that interesting, making for a tough immersion here involving the potential non-genre material to slow the film up before it gets started. There's also the film's somewhat obvious low-budget limitations present, where the flimsy-looking masks for the demons, cheesy gore make-up, and lack of elaborate wounds in a singular location setup offer a strong hint about this which might not always appeal to everyone and keeps it down at points.
Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language and Violence.
