Movie Review: Head Count (2019)

Head Count is a horror film directed by Elle Callahan, and co-written by Callahan and Michael Nader. The story is about a group of friends who are dealing with a strange presence that they unknowingly summoned called "Hisji". Just to be clear, we weren't even sure when it was summoned or what it was.

The majority of the film takes place in the Joshua Tree Desert where Evan (Isaac Jay) is meeting up with his brother Peyton (Cooper Rowe) so that they can go do some hiking. They meet up with some others who are hanging out along the way. The bothers have a weird dynamic, and the scenes with them are awkward, but it felt this way in a lot of the scenes where certain characters were interacting. The dialogue just didn't seem natural. The acting was pretty good, though, which balances it out a bit.

There was also too much character development, which added to the noticeably-bad character interactions. Even as a slow-burn, there just wasn't enough there to support the buildup, and it felt a bit lackluster. It would have been nice if they had peppered in more horror throughout the film. It also didn't make much sense to spread this out over several days. If it had all happened in one night, it would have probably flowed better.

Overall, the film was pretty good on the production side of things and had some redeeming qualities peppered in there. That being said, we would say that this film was just ok. It didn't bring a lot of originality to the table, the characters were written awkwardly and spending 3/4 of the film on character development wasn't justified with enough horror. Callahan definitely does a good job when it comes to the directing, though, and for being her first feature, it was a pretty good effort. We hope to see some more from her soon.