THE WRETCHED (15)
★★
TEENAGER Ben (John-Paul Howard) arrives in Porter Bay to stay with his father Liam (Jamison Jones) following a literal fall from grace.
The lad broke his arm jumping from a two-storey window after his neighbours caught him stealing their Vicodin prescription.
Ben must spend the summer rebuilding his father’s trust by working at the local marina. Instead, Ben becomes fixated on Liam’s next door neighbours, Abbie (Zarah Mahler) and Ty (Kevin Bigley), who have a young son Dillon (Blane Crockarell) and baby.
The children vanish and Ty blithely denies all knowledge of his their existence.
An upside-down A symbol carved into the neighbours’ home leads Ben to reliable online resource Witchipedia and the legend of a dark mother (Madelynn Stuenkel), who feeds on forgotten children in a subterranean lair.
Ben becomes convinced that the hellish hag has possessed Abbie and will prey upon other youngsters in the neighbourhood like spunky marina co-worker Mallory (Piper Curda) and her little sister Lily (Ja’layah Washington).
Shot largely in flashback to facilitate one satisfying twist, The Wretched is uncomfortably torn between Ben’s awkward rites of passage, including a nervous skinny dip with a beautiful girl, and his battle royale with ancient evil.
Howard is a likeable, flawed hero and make-up effects are convincing but jump-out-of-seat shocks are in depressingly short supply, particularly in a climatic showdown shrouded in night-time gloom.
A hoary coda doesn’t make sense in light of earlier events but does provide Drew and Brett Pierce’s creaky horror thriller with a flimsy hook for a sequel.
■ Streaming and available to download from May 8.