Something went seriously wrong with this movie, starting with the cold open. it starts with a bunch of white trash looking "militia" types with AR-15s with holo sights and very thick beards, looking like they're on a training mission in preparation for the next black president, when suddenly "something" attacks them, in a manner evocative of Predator.
Dropping a quick and early spoiler right here; this entire sequence has absolutely nothing to do with the film at all. It doesn't come back to anything, doesn't hint at anything, and it's not clear if it even takes place in the same area that the movie is set in. Nothing about it comes up later.
Then, we finally get into the actual movie, starting with a woman, Zoe, going on a hiking trip in the Appalachians. We also meet a guy who works there, named "Drake", when the boss finds out he has a criminal record and fires him. Drake handles this with the sort of maturity and restraint of a guilty child, barely clinging to his lie of "It's someone else" for 10 seconds before basically conceding it's him, then inexplicably gets into a pushing match with the boss, which equally inexplicably ends in hilarious fashion with the boss tumbling backwards over his desk, knocking over a pair of moose horns, with the moose horns spearing him through the eye and killing him.
So Drake is now panicking and has to deal with taking on Zoe and a group of others on a 10 day hike through the Appalachians. All throughout, he is emotionally manic, needlessly belligerent, and just an overall bully with everyone involved. It comes not as a surprise that he gets into a fight with the hikers, but that it took as long as it did for him to do so. They tie him down and decide to go looking for Zoe's backpack, as she brought her father's ashes with her to scatter at a mountaintop area.
Before this big fight sequence, we get a moment of them finding a dead coyote with its eyes torn out, then one of the hikers, Brian, gets a sickness around his eyes that looks similar to that. Then he suddenly gets better off-screen, then dies some time later with his eyes torn out like the coyote.
Just before this, we got what was conceivably a nightmare sequence in which Zoe is wandering the woods at night, gets confronted by what is ostensibly an alien, and then wakes up in an alien-like sleeping tube, spotting Drake in a similar tube across from her. She and Drake discuss it in real life, confirming it wasn't just a dream.
Then they come across a freaky looking totem which is very much not Cherokee, while earlier one of the hikers had found a bead that looked like nothing but he kept describing as "not native American" and looking like a scarab.
At some point after Brian dies, they all just disperse, going their own way, before Zoe finds Drake again, sick in the eyes like Brian was, and they go into a cave where they find lots of tourists' baggage and Drake has a meltdown saying THEY'VE been watching us for generations, using our eyes like spy cameras. He then freaks out and tears out his own eyes and Zoe runs off and...
Escapes. She scatters her father's ashes like she wanted. Inexplicably, she finds a "scarab" bead in his ashes, then she gets magically transported (or flashes back to) the alien sleeping tubes, where everyone is alive and awake and freaking out.
Then the movie just ends, having barely done anything with its concept and seemingly unaware of it. They seemed to be implying an ancient aliens connection, but it was never even indirectly hinted at. It's as though a significant portion of the film were cut out and nothing further was done to rectify it.
Dropping a quick and early spoiler right here; this entire sequence has absolutely nothing to do with the film at all. It doesn't come back to anything, doesn't hint at anything, and it's not clear if it even takes place in the same area that the movie is set in. Nothing about it comes up later.
Then, we finally get into the actual movie, starting with a woman, Zoe, going on a hiking trip in the Appalachians. We also meet a guy who works there, named "Drake", when the boss finds out he has a criminal record and fires him. Drake handles this with the sort of maturity and restraint of a guilty child, barely clinging to his lie of "It's someone else" for 10 seconds before basically conceding it's him, then inexplicably gets into a pushing match with the boss, which equally inexplicably ends in hilarious fashion with the boss tumbling backwards over his desk, knocking over a pair of moose horns, with the moose horns spearing him through the eye and killing him.
So Drake is now panicking and has to deal with taking on Zoe and a group of others on a 10 day hike through the Appalachians. All throughout, he is emotionally manic, needlessly belligerent, and just an overall bully with everyone involved. It comes not as a surprise that he gets into a fight with the hikers, but that it took as long as it did for him to do so. They tie him down and decide to go looking for Zoe's backpack, as she brought her father's ashes with her to scatter at a mountaintop area.
Before this big fight sequence, we get a moment of them finding a dead coyote with its eyes torn out, then one of the hikers, Brian, gets a sickness around his eyes that looks similar to that. Then he suddenly gets better off-screen, then dies some time later with his eyes torn out like the coyote.
Just before this, we got what was conceivably a nightmare sequence in which Zoe is wandering the woods at night, gets confronted by what is ostensibly an alien, and then wakes up in an alien-like sleeping tube, spotting Drake in a similar tube across from her. She and Drake discuss it in real life, confirming it wasn't just a dream.
Then they come across a freaky looking totem which is very much not Cherokee, while earlier one of the hikers had found a bead that looked like nothing but he kept describing as "not native American" and looking like a scarab.
At some point after Brian dies, they all just disperse, going their own way, before Zoe finds Drake again, sick in the eyes like Brian was, and they go into a cave where they find lots of tourists' baggage and Drake has a meltdown saying THEY'VE been watching us for generations, using our eyes like spy cameras. He then freaks out and tears out his own eyes and Zoe runs off and...
Escapes. She scatters her father's ashes like she wanted. Inexplicably, she finds a "scarab" bead in his ashes, then she gets magically transported (or flashes back to) the alien sleeping tubes, where everyone is alive and awake and freaking out.
Then the movie just ends, having barely done anything with its concept and seemingly unaware of it. They seemed to be implying an ancient aliens connection, but it was never even indirectly hinted at. It's as though a significant portion of the film were cut out and nothing further was done to rectify it.