Review – The Empty Acre

I started out really loving this movie. It had a certain subtlety missing in most bargain-basement horror pictures. The monster was amorphous, appearing as little more than shadows. The production – particularly the script and the acting – was good enough to avoid being terrible while at the same time not good enough to be Hollywood slick. The opening twist is that a young farm couple’s land contains an “empty acre,” a dead patch of earth that appears to have some malevolent power. This could have turned into a “Colour Out of Space” moment, or really gone just about anywhere else, but instead it stays put more or less where it is. I could forgive the animal death and the baby abduction for awhile, but by the midpoint it was sadly obvious that the show had shot its bolt. If only the folks who made this had gotten tired of their spooky routines a little faster than I did. Mildly amusing