In the end, I found nothing particularly special or unique about this film. It was a rather run-of-the-mill indie effort with no legitimate scares and with minimal payoffs.

While I did enjoy the characters somewhat, there was something about their dynamics together that made me not entirely buy them as brother and sisters. Also, each of them come across as a bit of a caricature rather than an actual person.

After they sit around and commiserate for a while about what a lousy father Mark was to them, weird things begin to happen like lights inside the cabin turning off by themselves and figures appearing who aren’t really there, such as that of their dead father.

They then make the acquaintance of realtor Grace (played by Debra Lord Cooke), who’d initially sold the place to Mark, and who wasn’t even aware that Mark had children. She’s the one who supposedly found Mark after his fatal fall on the stairs.

It doesn’t take long before they discover the attic, and the crazy-ass banging noises coming from up there aren’t helping matters. However, when their attempts to get up there are thwarted by a stuck door, they give up for the time being.

While checking out her father’s bedroom upstairs, Beth finds a framed photograph of two people that neither she nor her siblings recognize. She finds it odd, but doesn’t invest too much more thought in it than that.

Some time later, the man’s three grown children, Emma (played by Lauren Pisano), Beth (played by Kellie Spill), and Dustin (played by Daniel Burns) arrive at the cabin, and it quickly becomes clear that they have inherited the $1.3 million rural residence.

The movie begins with a man named Mark (played by Bart Shattuck) entering his lakeside cabin and heading up to the attic for reasons unknown.

Now granted, I am not generally the biggest proponent of horror films about remote cabins in the woods, but I’d received some favorable feedback from followers about this one, so I decided to give it a whirl.

Movie of the Day: Sight Unseen (2026) * This film premiered at the Maine International Film Festival in the US on July 19, 2025. * This was the first feature-length film for writer/director Stephen Parkhurst since his debut, Roommate Wanted, in 2013.

That said, my favorite part of the film was when the cast from Chest explain that despite the footage found on Aaron’s camera that show him in front of and venturing inside of a cave at the given coordinates, there is no cave at that location and there never was.

The problem with sequels within the found footage subgenre is that there isn’t enough suspension of disbelief on the planet to allow someone to actually believe that a damn thing that they see in such sequels could be true.

The footage recounts how Aaron received an anonymous email that gave him the coordinates of Jeffrey’s Hell. And so he sets out alone to see the spot.

A number of cast members (including Josh Croft, Dean Shortland, Marissa Kaye, Sarah VanArsdal, and Jasson Cring) return in this sequel but playing themselves so they can supply interview footage regarding the Aaron Irons disappearance.

This sequel to Chest brings us interviews conducted in the Summer of 2023 by an anonymous film team who discovered the Aaron Irons case online via true crime message boards.

This film follows the events that took place in Chest (2022). Supposedly filmmaker Aaron Irons went missing in 2023 in the Appalachian Wilderness area known as “Jeffrey’s Hell.” After months of searching, the case went cold and the search efforts were halted.

Movie of the Day: Jeffrey’s Hell (2024) * This film premiered at the Unnamed Footage Festival in the US on March 31, 2024. * This was the second of the two films directed by Aaron Irons thus far, the first having been Chest (2022).

A little preying mantis action for our solemn Sunday soirée. Let us prey! 🙏

Any type of scares whatsoever are reserved for the last half hour of the film, with none of them being particularly effective. The whole production is very amateurish and clearly very inspired by The Blair Witch Project (1999) as so many found footage films were and are.

Jeff Granger (played by Josh Croft) is the team’s contact in the remote region of the mountain, and their interview with him reveals that the chest is believed to be cursed. Other locals tell the team about Jeffrey’s Hell, a place where the box is believed to be.