Midnight and deep in the woods there runs a young woman, Kristy (Dal Nicole), who is wearing nothing but a shift with a gaping hole in the belly through which she appears to be pregnant. She keeps twitching in a panicky fashion, and when she tries to call for help on her phone she cannot get through - then she uses the shard of glass she holds in her other hand to stab herself in the womb as whatever is gestating inside her tries to get out. At around the same time, her friends Ashley (Larissa White) and Lyndsey (Cameisha Cotton) are driving out to the country cabin she was staying in to meet her, little knowing of the terror that awaits them - and that's just from the Peeping Tom.
Avowed horror fan Matt Stuertz had made a feature before Tonight She Comes, but this was the one that garnered him some international interest thanks to its off-balance, way over the top stylings which were so preposterous from some angles this looked like a comedy. Whether it was or not was up to the viewer, and certainly there were instances where you would be likely to laugh, even out of sheer disgust at what he was putting his characters through, and with a great amount of glee into the bargain. What this was turned out to be your basic spam in a cabin flick, yet the intensity of its gore and willingness to go that extra mile for its effects made it worth a look for the jaded aficionado.
Obviously, at this stage in the game it was difficult to find a horror fan who was not jaded, and there were plenty, casual and dedicated alike, who simply did not get where Stuertz was coming from, essentially an attempt to pay tribute to and go one better than the horror movies he grew up loving. The Evil Dead was a blatant influence with its low budget aesthetic belying a twisted imagination that made the best of what resources were available, but you could see many others in what was more or less one of those backwoods shockers updated, though not too much. In some parts it could have been drawn from one of those seventies or eighties originals, in others it was very much its own thing.
It was not only the three girls who showed up at that cabin, for two guys were present too, James (Nathan Eswine) and Phil (Brock Russell), the latter introduced having a back seat masturbation session (if that is indeed a "thing") and pointing to the film's preoccupation with bodily fluids, almost all of which featured here - mostly blood, however. Phil seems to have a problem keeping it in his trousers, for when he spots the ladies in their bikinis he cannot help but whip it out again, and you may be beginning to wonder what kind of movie you'd let yourself in for, but once he stumbles across the naked body of Kristy in the woods, the story, such as it was, grew clearer, notably because Kristy is not really dead. In a tribute to the trash favourite LifeForce, she also stayed naked for the rest of the running time.
This was down to Kristy, who may not be Kristy anymore, presented as the villainess, though in truth clarity was not this film's strong point - working up a state of barely contained delirium was, on the other hand, and once the ritual commenced you knew you were in for something insane. As Stuertz was a big slasher fan (that much was apparent), as expected the cast were picked off one by one, but to cut a long story short James and Ashley wind up holed up in the cabin with three hillbilly Satanists (or they may be more Lovecraftian than that, it's difficult to completely discern) who persuade them at gun and knifepoint to partake in their ceremony, which seems to be to stop the Kristy demon from progressing any further. To do what? That wasn't made apparent either, but she was up to no good and preventing her was a matter of one of the most cheerfully revolting sequences in low budget horror; suffice to say you may not feel like a drink afterwards. Or maybe you would, to get the taste out of your mouth. Relentless bad taste, that was, in a wild and demented gem. Electro-score by Wojciech Golczewski.
