Candlewood (2025) - Horror Film Review

Candlewood is a new indie suspense thriller that has been released by Mill Creek Entertainment. Directed and co-written by Myke Furhman, this takes the paranormal genre and blends it somewhat effectively with the thriller genre, though makes it a little too obvious as to what is actually going on.

Kevin (Joel Bryant), his wife, Veronica (Lisann Valentin - Jessica Jones TV show), and their two children - Sarah (Isabel Lysiak) and Matteo (Coulter Ibanez - She Came From the Woods) have recently relocated from the city to a woodland property out in the sticks, hoping for a fresh start. They discover a group of locals who seem hostile to outsiders, with creepy property owner Elijah (Jeffrey Alan Solomon) and flirtatious nearby neighbour Brandi (Jessica Altchiler) seeming to be the only ones willing to welcome the new family. With this already causing friction within the family group, the increasing apparent sightings of ghosts, possibly related to a local legend, increasingly threaten to tear the family apart.

The movie begins with a fantastic prologue that immediately drew me to the picture. This sequence was full of horror and tension, featuring corpses that had wonderfully bleak makeup effects on them, and a man committing suicide that toys with audience expectations by drawing out the expected moment that the rising score alludes to, to make something well signposted still alarming to see. Had the rest of the film shown this quality to story telling then Candlewood would have been a masterpiece, but unfortunately that was the very best scene in the entire film. After an overlong intro credits sequence (complete with a Danny Elfman sounding piece of music), the film begins proper and some of the cracks begin to show.

My problem was that I didn't like any of the four protagonists, making it hard to root for them, and also hard to care about what happens to them. Worst of these was Kevin, a man who always acts like he has all the answers but just seems a bit of a moron. The voice of the actor really reminded me of Jonathan Banks from Breaking Bad fame, I found this distracting, though obviously that is a 'me' problem. The rest of the family don't fare too better, especially Veronica who has some really twisted lines where she basically says she hates her children. I accept that all four were suffering strange symptoms, but these moments always seemed very cold, without a realistic response from other characters. Solomon was superb as the effortlessly creepy property manager, I liked the way he always seemed to be amused by a joke that only he knew, so his scenes were forever delightful.
Candlewood has a unique way of making ordinary looking characters seem monstrous just by the way they act. There is a quiet amusement from the locals that gives an unsettling vibe, with facial expressions seeming somehow exaggerated without it being super obvious, giving a bit of an 'uncanny valley' feeling that I was fully on board for.

The meat of the horror comes both from the ghostly apparitions various family members see, and the increasingly unhinged actions of the family. It could have been fun wondering what exactly was really going on, but this part was sadly ruined by far too much signposting. From the effects used, and different characters seeing different things, it was clear that the ghosts may not turn out to be anything more than hallucinations. There are attempts at jump scares that always fell flat, the ghosts looking quite generic.
Where the plot goes was totally expected, and this even saw fit to end on an epilogue that wasn't the most original way to end a movie, and which I guessed would happen when I got to about halfway through the film. 
I might not think much of the main characters, but there were some decent enough moments, makeup effects for damage inflicted on characters looked good on camera and the mainly unsurprising score did a decent enough job.

I think if the plot of what actually was happening in Candlewood had been less obvious then I might have gotten into this more. It made for a horror that was lacking in decent twists, being far more of a psychological thriller than the synopsis might make you expected. There were plenty of great moments, and some standout actors here however, especially with that prologue that was near film perfection to see play out.

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