- Director: Peter ‘Drago’ Tiemann
- Writers: Jason L Lowe, Peter ‘Drago’ Tiemann
- Stars: Adam Korson, John Schneider, Brent Bailey
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 33 Minutes
Synopsis
Eleven-year-old Jesse’s mother complains to her mother that he’s being bullied at school. They’re visiting grandma and grandpa Martin. Grandpa and Jesse go hunting. Grandpa steals Jesse’s bacon, but only as a favor. Jesse shoots a buck, and they have to follow the blood trail.
Jesse stops to eat a cookie, and the throws a piece at something in the woods. He follows the thing into the woods and sees a strange staircase that goes nowhere. It goes up to a small landing and then splits in two— then stops.
Something grabs Jesse, and he screams. Grandpa chases after him and shoots the thing. Credits roll.
Twenty years pass. Josh and his brother Nick are going hiking in the same area. The guy at the shop warns them about the blood moon tonight. “People go missing during the blood moon.” They join up with Rebeccah, Jordon, and Doug. Nobody likes Doug.The five set off into the woods.
They walk all day and come across some kind of shelter that someone built out in the woods. Rebecca stops to tie her shoe and has a vision of some kind of zombie-monster. While they’re taking care of her, Doug screams and vanishes. Nope- he’s just swimming in the river. He gets out, and he’s covered in leeches, which the others find hilarious.
They continue on and come across an agitated man in a business suit way out the woods just talking to himself. His head’s been cut open badly, and there’s a wounded woman with a baby there as well. The woman is the same one Rebecca saw earlier. The man draws a gun and runs our group off. The man shoots himself in the head and goes right on talking to them. The baby turns out to be a huge worm-creature. They’re ghosts or something.
They can’t turn back, as it’s nearly dark. They set up camp. Doug has a sexy dream, but as this happens, something pulls him out of his tent. Something tears him apart while the others sleep. He screams, which wakes the others, and they go off to find him in the dark. Naturally, they get lost, but they do see a light.
It’s the stairs. The stairs to nowhere have little chandeliers. Josh hears Doug yelling inside and finds a door in the base of the stairs. They force the door and go looking for the voice in th underground industrial space. They find Jesse, who’s still eleven years old. They see that it’s a huge subterranean industrial complex with a growling creature lurking somewhere. Jesse says, “It’s one of the hunters. The door changes. It’s never in the same spot.”
They return to the door, but the monster kills Josh. They find a whole boneyard of corpses, including Doug. The thing chases them through the woods. It catches Rebecca, but the others hide in an abandoned RV. Nick remembers when Jesse and Grandpa Gene went missing from back when he was little. Nick grew up, but Jesse never did.
They find a shotgun and four shells, and Jordon shoots it four times, but it doesn’t stop and kills her. Nick uses propane and some roadside torches to set it on fire and make it run off. Nick and Jesse go back to eh stairs and find them burning.
The next morning, the police all show up, and they recognize Jesse immediately, although they can’t explain why he hasn’t aged. Jesse is soon reunited with his mother and grandmother. Nick and Jesses stay friends.
Commentary
I really liked the super-long pre-credit sequence. The hiking sequence is really good too. The subterranean bit is also good. It’s almost like they made three different movies.
Nick, Jordon, and Jesse could have just stayed in the RV until morning. We could see from Josh’s watch that this all took place around five a.m., so it wouldn’t have been a long wait. Also, when the stairs burned down, Nick and Jesse never thought to send anyone back for Grandpa Gene, who we were told was still alive down there.
Where did all that underground stuff come from? It wasn’t alien, because there were signs on the walls written in English. Weird.
The cast here was excellent. It was obvious who was who and what everyone’s names were. They were interesting characters in an interesting situation. The Grub-Daddy monster was obviously just a guy in a suit, but the buildup and suspense make it worthwhile.