Wow I couldn't believe that such a great horror film had passed right under my radar for so long until I first saw it last year on a blind online rental, you never know what you may dig up when watching horror movies you never have before! It's definitely one of those slow and steady type of films but I had a blast trying to figure out what was really going on in the story and where it was all heading, it's not at all as straightforward as you might think... I was never bored with it, I found it all quite gripping from the get go, especially after the genuinely shocking opening scene! It sure is a beautifully shot movie, everything looks so stark and cold, and the locations in the idyllic-looking seaside town are full of sinister atmosphere and dread. It has some of the most tense and scary scenes you'll ever see in the dark in a horror movie, with one sequence of a whole doomed family being stalked in a mist-shrouded pitch black house playing out like a nightmare on film. The dead town feels like a real old fashioned place and community frozen in time, and the menacing tone and the horrific violent scenes work against the look of it, tearing away the peaceful facade of the 'normal' small town and gradually revealing the rot and terror that lies just beneath the surface, the soulless malevolent people that inhabit the place are dead and not buried, it's a cute little seaside town that's gone to hell and it's genuinely creepy as hell! It really grew on me through the story and the quality of the atmosphere and how you learned the terrible truth as it all headed towards a superb macabre twist that was done terrifically well, because you've been following that one character all the way and you thought you knew who he was but it turns out that he didn't even really know himself as his mind and his whole world crumbles around him, and any hope of a positive resolution to the story is crushed, and evil wins, royally! Sometimes in horror movies that don't have a happy ending it can seriously work and even become something kind of grand and awesome in its darkness, and this is one of those times to me, it's was one of the best I'd seen in years. So the late Jack Albertson was bloody well fantastic as the utterly insane coroner with the darkest of agendas and a seriously twisted love of what he considered art. His character seems like the ideal harmless old pillar of the community type but the reality is anything but, he's a heartless monster who has the innocent brutality slaughtered, intentionally horribly, all so that he may remake them and add them to his collection of walking dead masterpieces, and preserve the humble time capsule image of his town... Who knew the same actor who played lovable old kooky grandpa Joe could play evil so well, I think he stole the show! This movie absolutely deserves to be more we'll remembered and regarded than it seems to be, as its an excellently constructed mystery horror thriller that doesn't follow a group of teens or anything like that, and it doesn't skimp on the horror and dares to have one of the most fearsomely hopeless endings you'll ever come across. True hidden gem that's well worth seeing for the creepy and effective story, the morbid scenes and very nasty deeds! 💀 x.