One of the better horror, suspense, and mystery films of recent years, and it does so on a small budget with only a small cast. Some of the denser people who insist on lots of gore and explosions downvoted this because of short attention spans and wanting only flash and trash. But it really does deserve to be rated around 8, as it was by critics and the audiences that first saw it. There is an incredible sense of tension, fear, and mystery for nearly the whole film.

Spoilers: Really? Some people actually had a hard time figuring out the ending? Do they want big flashing letters or sometime telling it to them? This was so obvious.

The boy's mother changed into the monster he'd heard in the distance. At the end he discovers her living nearby, chaining herself so she wouldn't kill anyone. He comes close, angered she lied to him and left him, kills her, and is changed to a monster himself.

First, let me state that as I am typing this around 3pm CDT on August 30, 2022, there are undeniable signs of vote packing - 14.8% of the total are for a 10 star rating, more than all of the 7, 8 and 9 star combined (13%). This is not possible unless bad actors are inflating the rating as we see often, and STILL the overall rating is 4.5 stars - people like me are down-voting it on purpose to get it closer to the real rating which IMHO should be around 2.

As for the movie, this is one of those that had a decent concept and decent acting but it was way, way too slow. Almost nothing of any note happens until near the end and I had guessed within the first 2 minutes of the movie that the creature lurking near the tree in the background where the blind son (Solomon) was looking is the mother (Nydia), for some reason mutated - this is never made clear but you could tell she 'evolved' because of the clues they put in the movie (a hunter named Hank near the end of the movie finds a journal addressed to the son with the first pages legible but later filled with increasingly unreadable gibberish addressed to the son, and it's in some kind of huge, tree-limb covered nest).

Anyway, Solomon is abandoned by Nydia with no clear explanation given to the kid as to why she left, in a house without utilities close to woods. The reason she split was that she was turning gradually into a creature of some kind (her with some makeup and contact lenses as it turns out) and she's chained up out in the woods. Before she left she taught the boy some rules, never to go out without the rope around his waist attached to the house and to always split the game and fish he caught in two and throw half into the woods. She herself is chained to prevent her from attacking him and I guessed that immediately as well when he found the chain (but then couldn't she have attacked him then???). A plot hole. And of course she's eating whatever he does throw into the woods as we see animal bones in one scene in a pile, otherwise she'd starve.

Anyway, Hank kills a deer and after defending himself against the kid who panics he eventually befriends him, obviously concerned since the kid looks like a hillbilly, is blind, lives on his own and is running out of canned food. Sounds promising, right?

WRONG - we see almost every stinking movement of this kid, so boring and slow as he manages his way to and fro. And the hunter speaks to the kid as if he is a little child. So aggravating. Obviously a very low budget though the camera work was okay.

At the end of the movie Hank, having several times heard this weird screaming, goes out with his rifle to set a bear trap and gets killed by Nydia, and of course the budget doesn't allow for a kill scene to be shown, all we ever see are some fake scratches on his dead face. Apparently Hank gets off a shot and Solomon, hearing it, makes his slow, slow way to investigate, finds the dead hunter, then his mother rushes out to get him but the chain stops her short. So the kid starts humming their favorite song, something she told him always to do when he felt bad, and she recognizes it and starts humming it too. He comes closer with tears in his eyes, close enough for her to rush him and she hugs him, recognizing her son. At this moment Solomon (the kid) naturally takes the opportunity to stab her to death. Sorry, ma! Shortly thereafter his white eyes develop the same eerie, reptile-like retinas his mother had and the movie ends. There was a father involved but he was out of the picture when the movie started and I am only guessing Nydia killed HIM, perhaps in some kind of ritual that these creatures go through. That clue was dropped when the hunter found and read a different journal in the house to Solomon but stopped reading it when he came to a page where Nydia wrote angry words about the husband trying to take Solomon and there's a drawing of the chain she was tethered to.

Never answered: what kind of creatures were they? What was their story? How did the mother get chained in the first place? I have to assume she did it when she was still mostly normal (before she left we hear her cough a few times, I suppose that was signaling the change). What happened to the father? Why didn't the hunter the morning after he left the kid go to his vehicle if he had one (it was never shown) and get the authorities to rescue the kid? Here's something odd - he apparently doesn't possess a cell phone since there was no standard scene of 'I can't get a signal!'. There was no boat shown and there was no lake or river ever shown that he could have used it on, only a rocky and turbulent stream too small to navigate on, so how did he get to the woods??? Before the mother mutated her vision was perfect (and though her eyes are different her vision is still fine) so why did Solomon have completely white eyes that ended up matching hers? What was the point then of him being blind??? And what is the point of mutating and living like an animal chained in the woods? If I knew that was happening to me I'd kill myself but only after taking the kid somewhere to drop him off with someone. But seriously, what was the end game for the creature? I don't get it.

WHY did I watch this movie (for free thank goodness!) without checking out the honest 1 star reviews on IMDB? I almost always do, dang it, but at least I hope you profit from my review and avoid this movie like the plague it is, unless you suffer from insomnia.

Blind kid and mom live in a dark dead forest, looks like some post-apocalyptic world, she teaches him how to survive alone and be always tethered to a long rope to avoid getting lost, one day in the forest he finds a big heavy chain, mom fast takes him away from there, even more strange, mom tells him to always throw food to some part of the forest, one night mom reads him a tale about fierce creatures that killed people, then mom just leaves at the middle of the night without explanation, the blind kids grows up alone, catches small animals in traps and throws part of them in that part of the forest, someday a hunter kills a deer, it's an average man, shares the food with him, the hunter finds mom's diary, it says they (mom, dad and blind kid) can't live with the rest of people, then there is a horrible roar outside, the hunter goes to the forest to hunt the animal, he finds another big heavy chain coming from a small den, there is a notebook inside, he doesn't come back so the blind guy goes to the forest to try to find him, he does, but the hunter is already dead, from the den comes out mom in chains, she's different, looks like part human part werewolf or something else, her eyes are like alligator eyes, he knows there is someone there but he doesn't know its mom, he sings because he's nervous, she responds to the song and sings too, he recognizes her, she attacks him and he kills her with a knife, then, his white blind eyes turn alligator style.

It's a great dark beautiful movie in a low budget, full of questions that all get answered at the end : it's not post-apocalyptic, its just a family that went to live deep in the forest because they know they turn into dangerous creatures, the first heavy chain was dad's, mom left because she knew she was turning into a creature, the blind guy turned into creature at the very end, without rope or chain he will probably go to kill uncontrolled, the food they throw at the specific part of the forest was to feed dad and later for mom. Great story, great performances, great photography, sound and customs, the story develops slowly so the viewers have time to process the pieces of the puzzle that we get one by one. We need more movies like this.