What Would You Ignore For Paradise? Those Who Walk Away 2022 (spoiler-free review)

Image Courtesy of laemmle

Happy Tuesday, Horror Fans! Are you ready for a horror film that will make you question your morals? Then Those Who Walk Away is my recommendation for you. This film came out in 2022 and stars Booboo Stewart (Descendants and Twilight). One major highlight of the film is that it was filmed in one continuous shot. 

This film calls back to the story ‘The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas,” a 1973 novella by Ursula K. Le Guin. This story is about a paradise community. However, in order for the paradise to exist, one child is kept under the city, kept hungry, filthy, and cold. Once citizens are old enough to know the truth, they are shown the child and given the choice to stay or leave. Some people accept the fact that this kid is suffering and go back to their picturesque lives, while others choose to leave Omelas, knowing they can never return. 

Those Who Walk Away follows Max (Stewart) and Avery (played by Scarlett Sepeduto) on their first date. The couple is set to go to a cinema screening of The Evil Dead, but that gets canceled when someone calls in a bomb threat to the local movie theater. The couple then decides to walk around town talking, and eventually Avery convinces Max to drive to a local haunted house. 

Throughout the date, we are seeing more red flags from Avery; she even pressures Max into pointing a gun at her. Once they arrive at the haunted house, Avery tells Max the legend of Rotcreep, a local ‘urban legend’. The legend is that Rotcreep haunts this house and needs to be ‘fed’ one person a year, or the forces of Rotcreep will leave the house and terrorize the town. Throughout the film, we learn that both Max and Avery are carrying trauma from their past. After spending some time in the house, Max’s trauma is manipulated, and he ends up trapped in the house, fighting to get out. 

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. The continuous shot was really interesting and resulted in some great camera angles. The editing and FX were also very well done for an indie film. Watching Max confront his own trauma and asses the boundary of his morals was interesting and served as a truthful reminder that we can only change what we control. 

7.5 out of 10 Screams