I suspect that Matt Stuertz, the writer and director of Tonight She Comes, is a feral child who has never interacted with another living person. The only hole in my theory is that he's apparently capable of using language. Verbal communication is the closest any of the movie's characters get to a pattern of behavior that's recognizably human.

Lyndsey and Ashley are on the way to their friend Kristy's remote cabin in the woods. James is a mailman delivering letters to Kristy the same day. For some reason he's doing it out of uniform, driving his own pickup, with his buddy Peter tagging along for the ride. James stops on the side of the road to consult a map. Peter gets out of the car to wander around in the woods, telling James to pick him up on his way back. You know, like people do.

James gets to the cabin first. Instead of dropping off the mail and leaving, he takes a nap on a hammock. You know, like mailmen do.

Lyndsey and Ashley find the cabin next, but there's no sign of Kristy. They wander down to a river and engage in the kind of playful half-naked frolicking that only happens for the benefit of spectators. In this case, the spectator is Peter, who jerks off to them from the other side of the river.

Eventually the girls find James asleep on the hammock. They wake him up and demand an explanation for his presence. He tells them he's Kristy's mailman, which is apparently sufficient to allay their concerns. He spends the rest of the afternoon getting drunk with them.

Meanwhile, Peter finds Kristy in the woods, naked and unconscious. Fortunately, she still had her phone with her. He uses it to call Ashley, but not before he snaps a few pictures of Kristy on his own phone. Kristy rises and sneaks up on him while he's making the call. And then...

Smash cut to the cabin. Lyndsey seduces James with the porniest dialogue Stuertz can muster. Before they can bang, Ashley puts a damper on James's libido by telling him Lyndsey's a virgin. (She's not. This is what passes for a joke in the world of Tonight She Comes.) The story merges back onto the main rail with the appearance of Kristy standing on the other side of the river. None of them comment on the fact that she's covered in blood. She slowly enters the water. Ashley notices she received a voicemail from Kristy's phone. They listen to Peter's message. By now Kristy has disappeared. The threesome promptly forgets about her and returns to drinking. That night, Kristy reappears in their midst. The obvious implication is that she crossed the river, but she's still covered in blood from head to toe. She zombie walks toward them without saying a word. Ashley's dry observation: "There's something wrong with her." James is happy to ignore the blood, the dead-eyed stare, and the shard of glass that she's holding like a knife, as long as he can ogle her naughty bits. Nobody's especially alarmed until she gets close enough to James to start strangling him.

It turns out that Kristy was the victim of a satanic ritual performed by a family of characters who are no more recognizably human than the leads. More blood gets spilled and some gross stuff happens while I check the console every couple of minutes to see how much time is left in this turd.

Every character is a despicable moron. Peter is a chronic masturbator and a voyeuristic creep. James is a weak, shallow asshole. I guess Lyndsey is supposed to be drunk, but she acts more like she's on PCP. Ashley is a human scribble. The terrible pacing and tonal inconsistency are the diarrhea icing on this shit cake.

2 out of 10.

Seen on IMDB TV.