SPOILERS (here and there, I'm too tired to find them and black them all out, it's very late where I live).

I saw this the other day. It's not terrific, but I think they were probably attempting to do some interesting things with it. I am still trying to figure it out.

It's about two couples, one of which has kids, renting "cabins" at some kind of camping ground. The cabins are pretty freaking nice, by the way. At first I thought they were just in a home that belonged to one of the couples. Anyway, the couple with kids has a girl who is around ten, and a boy who is... eight or nine, I guess. The boy looks like another girl, soooo that's confusing.

The couples hang out and talk for the first part of the movie, and they drink a LOT. I am pretty sure there is some kind of commentary on society going on there, because they are just drinking CONSTANTLY. They would have been absolutely plastered if they really drank as much alcohol as they are shown drinking. They also toke up a little, if I recall correctly, and the man in one of the couples takes lithium for a manic-depressive disorder. Sooooooo, yah. Good times.

The conversations that they have seem to be written in order to make some kind of points about having children, and whether it is necessarily the best thing to do. They talk about various adventures that they could have without children, and so on.

At some point they go for a little hike in the woods. They find the remains of some kind of old building... not a REALLY old building, like a Mayan ruin, but something from... I don't know, maybe a hundred years ago. They explore the foundations of the building, and they find a deep, wide hole in the ground. The kids seem to be drawn to the hole, and they almost fall in. The call the hole "the shining place," or "the place that shines." It has kind of a greenish glow, off and on.

I am pretty sure the shining hole is supposed to be some kind of trap to attract unwary humans. The glow reminds me of the glow from a bug zapper they show at the campsite, which, of course, is meant to draw bugs to their death. That can't be a coincidence, they even do a slow zoom-in on the bug zapper. There is definitely something related to bugs going on, although I can't quite figure out what it is. When the children (very predictably) turn evil, as they eventually do, sometimes one of the main characters sees their shadows and the shadows are not the shadows of children. They are the shadows of some kind of humongous praying mantises. They didn't spend money on CGI to show actual giant praying mantises, they just show their shadows. Sooooooo, whatever that means.

I am really struggling to figure out what the hell this movie was shooting for. Either I am just being very dense, or they just completely blew it. Possibly both.

They seem to have borrowed ideas from Pet Sematary, just in the sense that the aerial view of the ruined old building in the woods evokes my memory of the aerial shots of the old Micmac burial ground in Pet Sematary. But, the way the children act when they get possessed by praying mantises, or whatever the hell possesses them, is not exactly the same as the way Gage acts in PS. They seem to get far more intelligent than normal children, and more dextrous and probably stronger.

What was the old building supposed to be, or supposed to have been, decades or centuries before the movie took place? I feel like that is probably the key, here. If I could figure that out, the whole movie might make more sense. It must have been either some kind of super-science outpost, communicating with bug-like aliens, or maybe some kind of structure related to magic of some kind, summoning up the ancient spirits of some kind of insect gods worshipped by early Native Americans. I don't know. Argh.

One thing that I thought the movie did pretty well was to show the confusion of one of the men, when he first witnesses the children falling to their deaths in the hole, and then very shortly afterwards sees them running around and playing back at the campsite. He is clearly as confused as I was by the entire movie, and he shows that confusion convincingly.

I was reminded a little of The Tommyknockers, now and then. Possibly just because of the green glow. Also, of course, because somehow the people in the movie unearth some kind of ancient, advanced Evil in the woods, and get possessed by it. As I said, I'm not sure if it is supposed to be aliens or malevolent intelligent insects, but whatever it is, it is definitely evil.

So, um... two thumbs sideways, maybe a little up, maybe a little down...? I don't know.