Movie Review: Manifest West-Available Now Vortex Media(Route 504 PR)

 Upon looking at the poster at first glance, I thought this would be the standard thriller of a family moving to the woods and being terrorized by the local loonies, i:e Deliverance. I then thought maybe it's more like The Wilderness Family just a modernized version, I was wrong on both of my initial thoughts.

Instead, we have a very normal family with the very human traits of wanting to get away from it all and start a new life, but there is something that is not quite right here and hidden very well. I kept thinking this was going to be the same sort of thriller that we have all seen hundreds of times, but no this is deeper than that.

A family that is not perfect is something that we can all relate to, it's certainly more realistic to have a family struggle with things as they do here, your audience can relate more to the characters and their situation than those in a posh house or mansion.

The young girls are playing war and the oldest is American while her sister is the Taliban. Their behavior and playfulness in the wilderness becomes concerning to a local store owner when they go to the city with their father. There are some underlying issues that are happening with the mother, she's not well and needs help, but her husband thought it might be best to get away from the city and away from it all. Their new neighbor tells him that he didn't get away from civilization he just moved to the top of a mountain, but there are still people there.

This is more than what the poster or trailer will have you believe it is, there are people here, real people with real issues and those around them who are just as real and the situations they find themselves in. Maybe they are the neighbors the others should worry about? Either way, it is much more of a film than what the trailer makes it look, it only really becomes tense for the last 20 minutes or so.