It’s an elegantly downbeat piece of film-making that vividly evokes the blighted small-town backdrop. This is a place that is swimming with frustration and despair even before the religious crackpots start throwing curses around.

Chiarella’s heartfelt horror is a tender coming-of-age drama spiked with terrifying home truths.

Writer-director Chiarella ingeniously conjures horror off-screen, relying on atmosphere, shadows, and the recurring device of an apparently familiar person behaving with unexplained menace. Puppy love is seldom so terrifying.

A premise that needed more room to breathe. It needed a more realistic perspective on how these characters would respond to their situation.