Critique: We are drawn into the film effectively by Lucinda Dooline as Lenore, who does an excellent job of acting like an extremely disagreeable person. Other than the case of Delgatto, the acting in general is professional if not inspired. There's a so-so make up job on the devils who make up in numbers what they lack in toughness. The shining portal tricks are okay, and the story is fairly engrossing, with a quite acceptable pace. The ending involves a waxy meltdown which fails to impress, but for the most part the special effects are fine, indeed it makes the impression of a pretty expensive film . When someone gets caught between the outside and hell watch out--one of the more gruesome special effects we have seen. Perhaps the film's main drawback is that it moves along without much suspense. We pretty much know what has happened from the very beginning and making the viewer work a bit would have been to the point. We would have liked to have seen more of Aaron's cursed life as an animal but all we get is a glimpse of Aaron as beast in a dream of Lenore's. That whole problematic seems to have been lost on the cutting-room floor. Although Cam and Lenore's relationship has some satisfying quirks, it would also have been interesting to see more of the relationship between Aaron and his aged daughter.

Plot Summary: 1871. The entranced Anna makes her way through the fog at night and meets the magician Delgatto by a fire while Aaron, Anna's husband, watches, calling to her. Aaron struggles with Delgatto and in the struggle, Anna is pierced with a blade. Anna's husband, Aaron, is cursed "to live like an animal" by the magician, and Del Gatto disappears amid bad acting. The present. Lenore St. Claire (looking very much like the woman killed at the outset) drives in a sedan in mountainous country. Someone or something stumbles through the brambles after a deer. Catches it, the thing tears at the flesh with its hands. An old woman, Ester, sits in her cabin afraid. Hearing the growling beast-man outside, knocking on her door, she holds a knife in hand and waits. She goes outside and the cursed Eric stumbles in with bloody hands, looking to be the same age he was in 1871. Lenore has flashbacks of the woman in the fog and a cheap looking devil-beast. She stops the car, deciding that she's hallucinating from exhaustion. She picks up a hitchhiker, Cam Rollins, perhaps thinking he'll keep her awake. However, he is soon annoyed by her surliness and he insists that she let him off. As she tries to drive away she gets stuck and though he helps her out but she drives off anyway, only to return to pick him up a few minutes later, remaining pretty grouchy. The old woman cuts the cursed man with a knife and lets blood pour into a glass, saying she will "end it". Simultaneously, Lenore has another hallucination in which a beast scrapes her hand, almost causing her to run off the road. When Lenore sees she actually does have a scrape on her hand, she tells Cam about her hallucinations that something is "broadcasting" to her, pulling her into these mountains. The old woman mutters over jars of elixirs. The plan is to alleviate the curse by cursing another. Much to Cam's distress, Lenora swerves about in a trance again as she drives. Ester cuts her hand and lets the blood drip into a jar, apparently offering her soul to Satan. Objects in the room start to vibrate and the gash is gone from her hand. She goes to the hearth with a jar of glowing green liquid which begins to run up her hand, unfortunately causing her to drops it. Lenora finally comes to a stop at the end of a wooded path. Cam is tempted to bail out but when Lenora heads into the woods by herself, but follows her. Ester tells the cursed Aaron that she tried to trade her soul but something went wrong and another person was drawn in. Meanwhile, Lenore gets further visions of what had come before. For some reason Cam doesn't think Lenore is crazy. When she tells Cam she feels like he needs her, things are definitely sparking up between Lenora and Cam. That is until she calls him Aaron. She goes and visits the graves of Anna and Aaron, though Aaron has no death date. There she meets Aaron. He recognizes her as his wife. She tells Cam that Aaron's the man in her dream, and he bids them come to his cabin. There Aaron shows them his glass menagerie, telling them about alchemists and showing them a locket with a picture of Anna, Aaron's wife, and of Aaron's daughter, Ester. Ester admits to Lenore that she will be drawn into hell at midnight instead of Aaron. Cam starts up the model T that Aaron has in his garage and they make their way down country roads as dusk falls. Aaron sees an image of Anna in the darkness but she steps away from him. Devil things step through a shining portal. Pretty soon Cam and Lenore see them scuttling just out of the view of their headlights. Cam hits one with the car. He sees that he has killed a devil with blue liquid for blood. This counts as evidence for what Ester was saying about hell. Something breaks into the cabin where Ester cowers and begins smashing the glasswork, which is ultimately trouble for her. Cam and Lenore have since come to the end of the road where something grabs at Lenore through the window, but Cam manages to fight it off. Next they've got to hoof it through a countryside filled with devils. When Cam has finished wrestling with a devil, the ever suggestible Lenore is called off by a voice again to the grave site. There she sees the glowing portal and enters it, finding DelGatto in a blasted wasteland. Aaron and Cam meet outside the portal, and go in after her. They struggle again and as Aaron goes for his knife, the arrangement shapes up to look distressingly like the one that started the film when Anna was killed.