Oh my god, it’s a genuinely good indie movie.
This slow-to-start but original and ultimately entertaining mindfuck is a slow-burn, low-key gem in the same way as (and bearing some superficial similarities to, in terms of setting and tone, and how gradually and realistically it brings on the total weirdness) Yellowbrickroad, another rare zero-budget favorite of mine.
The Rotten Tomatoes summary probably summarizes it better than I could: “Two brothers receive a cryptic video message inspiring them to revisit the UFO death cult they escaped a decade earlier. Hoping to find the closure that they couldn’t as young men, they’re forced to reconsider the cult’s beliefs when confronted with unexplainable phenomena surrounding the camp. As the members prepare for the coming of a mysterious event, the brothers race to unravel the seemingly impossible truth before their lives become permanently entangled with the cult.”
That is about the best it could be explained without spoilers, except to say there’s some hefty surrealism tucked away in the corners, and a metaphysical plateful of temporal spaghetti.
It’s also notable for being one of the very few movies I’ve ever immediately rewound (ok, clicked ‘play’ again) the minute it ended, and immediately re-watched in its entirety a second time almost from the beginning, just to look for the details I missed. (N.B. the only other time I can recall doing that is the Coen Brothers’ “Barton Fink”.)