The Choctaw had a myth of the Nalusa Chito, from Headboards of Stone A Mississippi Graveyard Rabbit Blog explains that, “The Choctaws have stories about Shadow beings. ‘Nalusa chito’ or ‘Impa shilup’ is the great black being (or devil) that was a soul eater. If you permitted ill thoughts or sadness to creep into your head, it would slither inside and feast on your soul.”
Now, this sounds logically like an explanation for mental health issues. But let’s not be logical as we are looking at a horror movie! What differentiates the act of devouring entropic energy from eating one’s soul? It is all just a matter of semantics and in 4 Dead Girls, the Nalusa Chito is a soul eater. The act of consuming a soul makes him younger in appearance… he is, then, an energy vampire.
Initially, we see a girl, Becky (Bianca Lopez), who seems to fear for her life. She’s being stalked by Devlin Chito (Mike Campbell), whom she refers to as Nalusa Chito. Devlin says words that seem to trigger a feeling in Becky suggesting she is not his random target. She looks almost insane, but still begs, saying she will not do it again. It is far too late now, he cuts her wrist and drinks her energy. He pulls out a blank fetish doll that he presses against her corpse. The doll takes on her appearance while the corpse disappears.
We have four girls traveling to a suburban house. They include a self-proclaimed ‘prude’, very naive and innocent Lily (Katherine Browning), her older sister Lori (Ashley Love), who is a bit more free-spirited, and Pam (Leah Verrill) who is Lori’s girlfriend. The girls’ belongings seem to have made it into the house through Jonathon’s (Ryan Peavy) possession who promises to have sex with Bianca. They encounter their new landlord Devlin, but instead of living chaperoning, he’s living alongside them. When the girls ask about Becky, his response is just that she moved on. There is also a set of self locking doors and windows, which is oddly cheap for a place like this.
In terms of the plot, there is not much to describe. Like, in Lori’s case, he attempts to capture her. Hiding in the dark mist or shadow that numbs evil women and feeding on them to survive while protecting the Nalusa chito, who are ancient shadow creatures whom are killed by the loss of purity, she transforms into a mist. Wherever light streams through, she exists. He hopes to consume evil women (Pam and Biance) while shattering the innocence of children (Lori and Lily). He plans to carve a new property manager out of a survivor removing the old one, Becky.
Two moments that stood out for me in this section are when we witness Lily becoming unsatisfied with Lori’s acceptance of her sexuality, and the following talk regarding gay marriage. In this she also puts forth that Pam is not as supportive as she likes to pretend she is, and rather, her father is a blatant homophobe.
In addition, I would have liked to see some character work, which is sadly missing from the film, that did occur through this scene. Unfortunately, rather than take a moralistic approach towards the supposed evil homophobe that was revealed, as her class status did, they opted for a different route. As her parents were deceased, I wondered whether a plot twist of one of the sisters having offed them would emerge, but that too unfortunately did not materialize.
The end product is a film that has many monotonous and bland themes. The suspenseful aspect of the film needs to be more engaging (the single story, three bedroom house doesn’t seem like a believable setting for the film), and the expected violence contained within appears too dull to elevate the sadness elsewhere. The unconventional creature type does move it slightly further than the bearable but the film if anything suffers from self-inflicted wounds. Still, there are countless worse movies than this.
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