“There’s something you need to know, and I don’t have much time. Our family killed them. And they never forgot.”

Story: After their dad’s suicide, siblings Nathan and Mirra return to their family homestead. But as they prepare to sell the family land, their family’s centuries-old ownership comes into question, as a group of women who work the siblings’ land say that their coven family owned it first…

Scares: Zero.
Splat Factor: Zero.

Subgenre: Family Legacy Horrors
Year Released: 2023 (Release) 2022 (film fest circuit)
Remake, Sequel or OG (Original Ghoul)?: Original

Trick or Treat?: Burn is a brief, befuddling mess I wanted to love, but only kinda appreciated. The themes of appropriation, colonizer privilege, “feminine” (caring for the land) vs “masculine” (Manifest Destiny) are powerful ones, and I wish this seventy minute movie had been longer. These subjects could have been an extremely powerful, creepy look at ancestral entitlement and the power of the land. Instead, it’s a quaint, quiet piece that enters and exits much too quickly.

Writer/director Elise Finnerty definitely has an incredible idea here, as well as good bones for a chilling story. Unfortunately, the story is disjointed. Even taking into account the dream sequences and hallucinatory moments. The climax took me a minute to comprehend, not because I’m an idiot (though that often factors into the equation), but because the editing, pacing, and screenplay were too muddled to truly sink into. There are only so many moments where I look at the screen and went “wait, why is this happening right now” or “oh, that scene just ended, cool I guess”, before I shrugged and just let the plot happen without questioning, or interacting, with it. 

The performers do excellent work with what they’re given, though the characters themselves could have been fleshed out a bit more. We learn that Nathan is an addict by Mirra’s exposition dump to one of the farmhands. Immediately cut to Nate trying to drink/snort/smoke anything and everything. Wow, that was…abrupt. Was Nate ever clean? Was he struggling to stay sober? Or was he feeling a-okay about his addictions? The film doesn’t address this. Mirra goes from “gotta work gotta work gotta work” career gal to “I don’t even like this stuff” in a similarly quick turnabout.

I’d like to think that the brief runtime was due to budgetary constraints, shortening a promising story to one that could actually be filmed within the financial considerations they had to take into account. This could have been an interesting back-to-the-land chiller in the vein of The Wicker Man, Burnt Offerings, or Midsommar. It still might, if Finnerty is given the ability to pull a Sam Raimi and re-do this film with everything she’d wanted to put in. That is, if there was more she actually wanted to say.

Burn might be terrifying for proponents of cis white patriarchy, but to me? It was a triumph of those who had to deal with centuries of inequality, even though the story itself was brief to the point of borderline pithiness. Still, if you want a quick watch that’ll make you cheer for the “villains” of the piece? Here you go. Burn has a brief touch of everything you’d want, and gorgeous sunflowers. Just know that it’s a quick fix, and for a more emotional experience, hark back to the greats in this genre.

Score: 2 out of 5 pumpkins. It really should be 1, but the premise is amazing, and the performances are wonderful.