1735. Leeds Point, New Jersey. A weary woman discovers she is pregnant with her thirteenth child. In a moment of despondence, she curses the unborn that it may be a devil. On the night the infant enters the world, no one in the room is left alive to recount the tale.
2005. Thirteen-year-old Patrick Shourds and his friend encounter a terrifying creature in the Pine Barrens. When only Patrick emerges from the woods alive, the residents of the small town blame and shun him. A pariah in his community, Patrick is ultimately driven away, vowing to never look back.
2025. Patrick reluctantly returns to Leeds Point after the death of his mother. Seeking to lay the ghosts of his past to rest, he soon discovers they refuse to go quietly. When a string of grisly events rocks the small town, old suspicions resurface, and the residents again point their fingers at the prodigal son.
Patrick will learn that he can't run from the past. He'll have to confront his demons. The monster in the woods and the darkness that dwells within.
This was a fantastic effort with quite a lot to like about it. The main starting point here is an immensely effective and intricate storyline that brings together several impressive features into a solid, coherent whole. Offering a three-pronged storyline featuring the use of three separate timelines, first offering up the quick introduction of the original birth and curse of the creature spawned from the original family being the thirteenth child of a particular family before going into the childhood years of the main character encountering the creature, before returning to the town in the present day to deal with it once more. This is a great way to go about bringing everything together, with the introduction retelling the famous legend of the creature as a starting point for how the whole folktale came together as a fun, brief way to get going. The main bulk of the story, taking place between the teenage years and his adulthood, in which each have encounters with the creature in the woods, allows this one to be a rich, layered storyline involving the traumatizing event in his teenage years against the haunting encounters found when he’s grown up.
That comes about due to the series of incredibly well-done scenes here depicting the different interactions with the townsmembers in the different timelines. The initial setup of him having witnessed the attack and survived only because he was unable to help his friend, being carried away and killed by the fictional creature, sets up an intriguing storyline about his guilt over being unable to help his friend, as everyone else in town blames him for the incident as the killer. The treatment at school, where he’s confronted and openly antagonized for their perceived notion of how he carried out the actions in question, leaves a strong mark, such that there’s a logical reason for him to constantly encounter the ghosts of those involved, not just as a teen but when he returns home to bury his mother as an adult. This creates a rather fun setup where the inability to come to terms with his past manifests in a great storyline that comes about from the interactions he has, trying to be friendly and accommodating, but being brought back to the same bullying that he encountered before. Some of this might go on a bit too long for its own good, and no need to be there with the book as long and detailed as it is, but this really is the main drawback with this one.
Working with these features and letting them set the stage for what’s to come later on, the series of interactions here involves the group encountering the creature in the woods or other parts around town. With the different timelines providing the chance to look into getting plenty of different bodies into the woods that manage to include some impressively written suspense sequences detailing the creature stalking around and taking out the intruder. The old-school encounters, from the birthed creature stalking the family to the original attack on the friend that sets everything in motion or the scenes of the locals looking in the woods for the truth where they get stalked by the creature, to the ghostly figures stalking him after the fact that beings him further into the sympathetic realm furthering his detached state from the rest of the town who blame him for everything, all make for a great time. The more recent encounters with the creature are even more fun as they manage to highlight the emotionally charged situations involving the characters coming together in some unexpected scenarios that make everything feel far more sympathetic than expected, not just making this a solid creature feature but coming together into a standout read.
5/5
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