NIX Is An Entertaining Film With Germanic Folklore Roots

Director

Anthony C. Ferrante

Writers

Skyler Caleb, Anthony C. Ferrante, Woodrow Wilson Hancock III

Stars

James Zimbardi, Dee Wallace, Michael Paré

Release date

October 31, 2022 (United States)

Country of origin

United States

Language

English

Also known as

Ác Quái

Filming locations

Antioch, California, USA

Distributed by

www.1091pictures.com

Inspired by Germanic folklore, a tragedy at a mysterious lake haunts the Coyle family as they must contend with a frightening entity that has revealed itself again and is out to destroy them for good.

A family on a camping trip loses a child in a drowning accident. This sets into play a dark path of madness and despair. Is the mysterious NIX creature from the water where the child drown to blame or is someone else?

NIX is co-written and directed by Anthony C. Ferrante of the Sharknado franchise fame. This time the campiness is left behind for the horror and thriller genres.

NIX gets many things right, for instance, it is full of spooky atmosphere. The film explores the loss of life and the pain that goes along with it

It features Dee Wallace (Donna) as the mother of the family. She shows her acting chops are still fresh and up to the task. Donna believes her deceased daughter is still alive and spends her days gazing at the static on the TV.

Younger son Zack (James Zimbardi) gives a compelling performance throughout the film. His story arc goes from zero to 60 a couple of times and really engages the audience with the confusion going on throughout the run time.

What can I say about Michael Paré? His character Idres is the brother of Donna. When Paré and Wallace share the screen magic happens. I wish the film offered more of these two legends getting emotional and giving the audience gold.

NIX incorporates pretty impressive practical creature effects by Vincent Guastini. Again, having more of this creature show up in the film would be a treat.

The themes which NIX explores are pretty fascinating, albeit sometimes this gets lost. Is this a horror film or a drama, well that is something that is hard to answer? Most of the film plays out with very few scares. When the shocks do happen they are usually flashbacks.

The finale clears a few things up storywise but also leaves many questions. The main ones are who is the strange lady (Tracy Pfau) that is by the lake the day Tessa goes missing. There’s no real backstory to her, but she does speak a weird spell before the creature shows up and Tessa disappears. This may have helped to give the audience an idea of why she was even in the film.

NIX is worth a view and has a few outstanding moments in the 1hr 43 minute run time. The acting is decent by all involved. The story is compelling and the creature effects are fun (especially if you’re a fan of 1950s creature features). The film might benefit from being straight horror or straight drama.

To rent on VOD https://geni.us/Watch_NIX

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