This movie draws a lot of obvious comparisons, particularly The Purge. This is reasonable, since the theme of having to defend yourself against your community is an effective one. But the lack of motivation makes this a problem. Nearly every review here says the same thing - why would people kill their targets because an anonymous letter says so? Are we supposed to believe that people are intrinsically bad?

This huge flaw doesn't make it a terrible movie though. The direction is fairly well done, the technical qualities are solid. And it's great to see a horror movie that isn't an inky black swirl. The sound doesn't have any of the annoying habits of massive dynamic range.

There is some weakness in the acting, and it's hard to pinpoint the problem. Every now and then there are little beats of dialogue that don't land correctly. I can't blame this on the actors or the script - I'm not sure which it would be.

The highlight of the movie is a score that seems to borrow from Vertigo. A welcome touch of class, we need more music like this.

Worth a watch, but don't expect to feel completely pleased with it.

If you have a weird and quirky sense of humor that is. The movie itself is quite flawed, but not to the degree that it would take out the fun of it all. If you like small budget movies (and thrillers to that extent),you will like this, with everything it offers and everything it doesn't.

Not the best acting overall, but it does the job. As does the technical "standard" of the movie. Again, one could easily nitpick on so many things - but why do that, when you can have some fun with this? And it has its heart in the right place

Moving into a new neighborhood, a woman and her kids wake up to receive strange letters informing them that they've been instructed to kill a random person in the neighborhood who will also try to kill them, and once they realize it isn't a joke tries to keep them and herself safe from the other neighbors out on their missions.

This was an incredibly enjoyable effort. One of the best features with this one is the whole setup of what's going on as this is a wholly believable and realistic outcome that might happen. The fact that this taps so well into the paranoia of the current modern landscape, not being able to trust your neighbors who you can't tell if they're taking the situation seriously or not is an incredibly modern situation. The fact that they get both sides of the spectrum, since the mother is supposed to go after the friend and actually visits her with no intention of following through but is eventually forced to do something when the husband misinterprets the situation allowing for the craziness to explode from there, all the while taking place while the kids are being stalked in their house by the neighbor. That ability of tapping into the modern-day mindset of the general public who are on-edge around each other and won't need much of an excuse to descend into the kind of frenzy that's portrayed here where a flimsy letter is all that's needed to instigate it feels very true and realistic to where the madness portrayed here doesn't feel very far off from actually occurring which is a fantastic touch. The main gist of the film, though, is the wholly enjoyable and brutal confrontations that are built up from the film's setup. The relentless pacing here starts off immediately with the strange guy getting blown away by the neighbor on his doorstep gets this off to a great start and drops you into this one quite easily, especially with the daily routine of their lives featuring the incident playing out behind them without interrupting the flow of the film. There's a lot to like with the tension in the rest of the encounters, from the escalated confrontation at her friends house to the son being confronted by the neighbor who's hunting him which has some great tension and gore involved all setting up the fantastic finale where it comes together in a really fun series of confrontations that take place down in the basement of the boyfriends' house which wraps everything together in a fine series of brutal action and dynamic meta storytelling about the nature of the outbreak. Given that all of this provides a breakneck pace and some fantastic indie-flavored gore for the kills not only from the group protecting themselves but also on the various cut away to the other people taking out the instructions for the day, there's quite a lot of positive elements that work well here. There isn't much to dislike with the film. One of the main flaws is the film's inability to explain what's going on. The idea of sending the community off into a frenzy of slaughter simply because of a series of red letters makes no sense as to why they would be compelled to do so, and with the rampant social media conversations going on about the incidents wouldn't have brought more of an authoritative presence to the situation. This feels incredibly sloppy and lazy as a motive to go about showcasing this premise but that's about it as there's nothing else here beyond the flimsy pretext. There's only one video that says what's going on and it's something that does stand out, much like the weird story of them helping the injured deer which gives great character context but seems like odd time filler that didn't need it. Overall, though, these are the only minor issues to be had with the film.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence, Extreme Graphic Language and Brief Nudity.