IT FEEDS (2025)

Studio:   Black Fawn Films
Director: Chad Archibald
Writer:   Chad Archibald
Producer: Chad Archibald, Cody Calahan, Evan Ottoni, William G. Santor, Doug Murray, Morris Chapdelaine
Stars:    Ashley Greene, Ellie O’Brien, Juno Rinaldi, Mark Taylor, Julian Richings, Brooklyn Marshall, Shayelin Martin, Dov Tiefenbach, Shawn Ashmore

Review Score:

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Summary:

A psychic with the ability to project herself into another person’s traumatic memories must save her daughter from a parasitic supernatural entity.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Using a psychic ability that projects her consciousness into nightmarish recreations of traumatic memories, therapist Dr. Cynthia Winstone enters the mind of her current client, Larry. In Larry’s mindscape, Cynthia identifies the man who abused Larry as a child as one of his former Phys Ed teachers.

After the encounter, Cynthia’s 17-year-old daughter Jordan, who assists her mother by monitoring sessions and conducting background research, talks to Larry about his trauma. Jordan mentions to Larry that her deceased father also possessed the same ability as Cynthia to see invisible supernatural figures.

Riley Harris, a young girl with strange scars on her arms, rushes into the house demanding to see Cynthia. Riley warns that her father doesn’t know she is there, but she heard from one of Cynthia’s former patients, Agatha Baker, that Dr. Winstone has a unique ability that might be able to separate Riley from a parasitic entity that has been possessing her. As Cynthia enters the room and sees the spectral creature stalking Riley, the girl’s widower father Randall bursts in to hurriedly collect his daughter while insisting she cannot be helped.

As soon as Randall leaves with Riley, Cynthia warns Jordan that they cannot help the girl because the evil attached to her poses too great of a personal risk to them. Jordan insists that her father would want them to save Riley, prompting Cynthia to remind Jordan that her father was driven to suicide because of a terrible experience with a powerful paranormal presence.

With Jordan’s help, Cynthia identifies Larry’s childhood abuser as Coach Doug Ferry. Cynthia phones her longtime contact with the police, Detective John Otis, to give him the coach’s name. Because of Cynthia’s assistance in the past, Detective Otis trusts her lead and launches an investigation that eventually results in Doug Ferry’s arrest.

With her mother too afraid to help Riley, Jordan secretly goes to see Agatha Baker to learn where Riley and her father Randall live. Upon her arrival at the Harris home, Randall is immediately dismissive of Jordan and her claim that Cynthia can help his daughter. Undeterred, Jordan sneaks inside the house and breaks the padlock on a hidden door to enter a cellar where she believes Riley is being held captive. Jordan finds Riley, who tells Jordan that her father doesn’t lock her in the basement, but rather, he locks “them” away. Randall suddenly knocks Jordan unconscious from behind.

Jordan wakes up restrained to a chair next to a disheveled older woman also being held prisoner. Jordan pleads with Randall to let her mother help his daughter. Randall responds, “She needs to feed it, or it will feed on her.” Riley apologizes before putting her hands on Jordan’s shoulders as instructed by her father. A dark presence appears, and its painful touch scars Jordan’s arms before it vanishes.

Knowing someone will come looking for Jordan, Randall prepares to flee with Riley. Meanwhile, Cynthia learns from Agatha where her daughter went, so the two women go searching for Jordan.

Riley privately tells Jordan that her father just wants to protect her. Jordan repeats that her mother can help Riley with the entity. Riley hands over cutters that Jordan uses to set herself and the other captive woman free.

Randall stops Jordan at gunpoint. Riley jumps in front of Jordan to shield her while pleading with Randall that they have to stop sacrificing innocent people. The other woman suddenly attacks Randall, causing his gun to fire into Riley’s neck. Riley dies in Jordan’s arms, at which point the parasitic creature transfers from Riley to Jordan. Jordan escapes outside to her mother while Randall speeds away from approaching sirens.

Cynthia and Agatha help Jordan recover at the police station. Detective Otis informs them that forensics found multiple remains at Randall’s home, indicating he had been using kidnap victims to feed his daughter’s creature for a long time.

Back at their home, Jordan warns Cynthia that Riley’s death transferred the monster to her, and she is now haunted by frightening visions of it that only she and her mother can see. With Agatha acting as the observer, Cynthia enters her daughter’s mind. In a nightmarish memory of Jordan finding her father after he’d hanged himself in the attic when she was younger, Cynthia confronts the creature. The entity’s grasp burns Cynthia’s arm in reality, prompting Agatha to forcefully knock Cynthia out of her trance.

Cynthia leaves Agatha with Jordan while she goes to the hospital to visit her client Larry, who works there as a nurse. Cynthia convinces Larry to help her obtain information about Randall’s wife Samantha, who died there the previous year while afflicted by the dark figure that subsequently possessed Riley. Cynthia learns Samantha’s case was handled by Dr. Donald Whittaker.

Cynthia visits the now-retired doctor at his home. Dr. Whittaker explains how Samantha looked to be rotting both inside and out, and she told him a hungry entity was inside her. Dr. Whittaker felt its presence when Samantha touched his arm to prove her condition could not be cured through physical means.

Randall gets past a cop stationed outside, knocks out Agatha, and abducts Jordan from her home. Upon finding her daughter missing, Cynthia hurries to the police station with Agatha.

Randall brings Jordan to the woods. Believing he can kill the creature by starving it, Randall locks Jordan inside a homemade coffin and buries her alive.

To everyone’s surprise, Randall then turns himself in to the police. Feeling he owes her a favor for her help capturing Doug Ferry, Detective Otis allows Cynthia to use her psychic ability on Randall. Entering Randall’s traumatic memories shows Cynthia where he left Jordan at Brookers Lake. Randall warns Cynthia that Jordan must die, otherwise the curse will continue.

Cynthia and Agatha race to the forest location with Detective Otis and other officers following closely behind. Cynthia and Agatha dig Jordan out of the ground. While Agatha distracts Detective Otis and the police from finding Dr. Winstone, Cynthia enters her daughter’s mindscape to confront the creature. Following a series of frightening events in the nightmare realm, Cynthia and Jordan finally team up together to hack apart the otherworldly monster with bladed weapons.

Cynthia and her daughter safely return to reality. Six months later, Cynthia uses her ability to help Jordan confront the painful memory of her father’s suicide.

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Review:

This shouldn’t be misconstrued as a knock against “It Feeds,” which is creatively crafted and stars appealing actors who put up engaging performances. But if producers had the big studio backing to swap Ashley Greene and Shawn Ashmore for household names, and marketing money to match a bolstered budget, ticket-buyers might have made the movie a success at the box office, since it has all the earmarks of a satisfying, if somewhat rote, theatrical thriller with broad appeal. As an independently produced project, however, “It Feeds” has its work cut out for it in finding the wider audience it deserves, since indie horror’s overcrowded radar is so bright with countless blips, fright fans might have a harder time finding the film.

Since the early 2010s, “It Feeds” writer/director Chad Archibald and his Canadian collaborators at Black Fawn Films have somewhat quietly carved out a laudable niche for themselves with several solid titles in the genre space, including “Bed of the Dead” (review here) and “I’ll Take Your Dead” (review here). Black Fawn’s movies don’t really set out to break new ground by taking big swings. Rather, they exhibit an earnest affinity for the horror formulas that inspired their creators to become filmmakers in the first place. Instead of exploiting cheap opportunities to pump out snoozy spookers, Black Fawn simply slips in subtle template tweaks and plenty of professional polish so their familiar-feeling frighteners don’t have the stale taste they would have if their same scripts were made by those who treat this work like assembly line filler for a streaming service. The common yet quality creeps of “It Feeds” aptly illustrate this idea.

Easily triggered types should be aware in advance that the trauma-heavy themes of “It Feeds” introduce scenes of suicide, kidnapping/captivity, and implied abuse of children. This makes for dark material, though the mood isn’t necessarily bleak or depressing. Part of how “It Feeds” gains an edge over comparable supernatural chillers is by not being afraid to harm children or put characters in harrowing situations other movies would shy away from. “It Feeds” comes up with a couple of shocks that stop you from assuming everything will always fit an expected pattern, which in turn puts a pinch of unpredictability into the mystery.

Psychic abilities run in the family for 17-year-old Jordan, at least with her parents. Jordan’s mother Cynthia possesses the power to enter another person’s memories, leading to a unique career as a therapist who heals patients by helping them directly confront the horrors haunting their minds. Jordan’s father could do the same thing, except his projected consciousness once faced a paranormal presence so powerful, the experience resulted in his death.

Riley, a young girl with strange scars on her arms, desperately wants Cynthia’s help getting rid of a parasitic entity that’s attached itself to her. Riley’s father Randall, on the other hand, insists his daughter is beyond saving. He wants nothing to do with another doctor because he feels he’s the only one capable of understanding what’s going on with his daughter. The problem is, Randall’s methods for protecting Riley involve letting the evil entity feed off of innocent victims instead.

Cynthia contends that the dark figure stalking Riley poses too much of a threat for their family to get involved. Jordan won’t hear it. She knows her father would have taken any risk for someone in need, so she takes it upon herself to get between Riley and Randall. Unfortunately for her, Jordan’s actions lead to a turn of events that puts her in immediate danger from the possessive presence. Now Cynthia has no choice but to deal with the demon, otherwise more than one family might lose a daughter.

Clearly, “It Feeds” employs a handful of typical tropes, in its narrative and in the visual realization of that fiction. The underlying concept is a variation of the “parent protecting a child from an evil entity” plot. For manufacturing a suspenseful mood, editing relies on standard setups such as someone waking suddenly from a nightmarish vision or cutting to a hand slowly creeping toward a doorknob. That latter conceit relates to my main nag, which is that the movie includes one or two too many sequences of a cautious person tiptoeing down a dark hallway whose corridor ends in a noisy jump scare.

But “It Feeds” makes its hay with what’s uncommon about its delivery. The “Dreamscape” hook adds an intriguing new layer to a seen-before storyline, and its otherworldly realm dresses sharper than similar, yet duller dream dimensions in movies like “Imaginary” (review here). Steeping characters in dour drama grounds the fantasy in relatable circumstances while motivating their backstories with invested stakes in the extraordinary activity that unfolds. “It Feeds” does just enough that’s different, and does it with an appropriate level of cinematic style, to become an example of how indie horror can be easily approachable without having to feel flat.

Someone ought to offer Chad Archibald and company a contract to bring their brand of midnight movies to Hollywood, because they know their way around horror as well as anyone in the business, even if they aren’t making major waves with their regular releases. Without being flashy, “It Feeds” comes with the right amount of flair to push past pedantic peers. Straightforward in story, yet engaging in execution, it’s simply a strong take on traditional terror.

Review Score: 75

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