I have in the past ingested and reviewed other works from Ian Messenger such as his Friday The 13th short films Friday The 13th: Revenant and Friday The 13th: Legacy as well as his found footage flick titled Wendigo Falls. The video on my Youtube channel for all of those in one fell swoop is still there if you're at all interested in checking out my thoughts on any of those, and once again on good ol' Instagram, I was contacted by him to review the new slab sewn together by him and his crew-In The Willows. I want to say thank you right away again for thinking of me to write something on my site for this because there's already so much I want to watch and review, but I will always make the the time to review someone's work in the indie scene if they ask me to. So, for this piece it was directed by Ashley Messenger (which may be his sister or wife? I'm not actually sure) but just having a film like this directed by a woman is really cool and adds something a little different to the mix-sure, this sort of thing has happened before in the past to a greater extent, but it's still awesome to see to switch things up a bit. But In The Willows focuses on a group of friends that want to help their pal Jackson with his addiction issues, so instead of staying in the city and trying to help him grind it out with every chance and convenience he's used to by way of getting some smack or whatever his drug of choice is, they take him literally in the middle of nowhere to some downtrodden, beat-the-hell-up farm/survival resort place for him to "be away from the wi-fi and to get some fresh air". Sounds like a great idea, right? It wasn't. Because at the opening of In The Willows we have three guys fishing and shooting the shit in some lake or pond in the area of where these "rehab" grounds stand, and in between them drinking and talking about God knows what, a couple of weirdos in burlap clown and jack-o-lantern masks appear out of nowhere and start snuffing them out. I was intrigued right away because who are these fellows and what's their purpose? I mean, this is a dark backwoods styled slasher so what else are they going to do-they're going to kill people. That's what. After the three randoms are sent to heaven or hell here in the beginning, we meet all of our main squeezes and really the people you will be spending the most time with are Jackson and Gabby-they have this whole past that starts getting dug into because they dated previously and Gabby starts shouting all of the sacrifices that she made for Jackson to his face to try and save him and to get him clean-but what do junkies do? They don't want to do that-they want to wallow in their lifestyle and hide in the corners so they can keep up with their habits. There is an underlying layer to the weird people with the masks wanting to kill all of them-and very quickly, my favorite of them was actually the overweight, Leatherface looking guy named Father Abner I believe-he was the only one that actually talked a couple of times and he shot one our main characters with an old school single shot shotty. So that was a good time. But with these killers with the masks and the woman with the little bell that she keeps ringing-I think that they are some kind of physical manifestations presented to all of them maybe as what they're afraid of or some kind of spirits to make them pay the toll for their sins? I don't know-maybe I'm looking to far into that aspect and maybe they're just a cannibal family looking for some lunch. Whatever is really going on here with In The Willows, I'm going to sit here and say that I enjoyed it quite a bit and I'm also going to state that I want a second part to this or even a full 80-90 minute feature so we can dig in a little more. I as well as you want to know more about our main group, we want to know what happens to them after Gabby is choked to death by the guy with the clown mask and what does happen after Father Abner carries the woman with the bell through the fields and into the end credits. Yeah-hear me 6th Chamber Pictures-I think a sequel or a full length version is in order here. Because Jackson needs to get sober and he needs to get back with Gabby again. Dug it.