John McLoughlin's Underwood

Cody checks out a supernatural mystery that is now on Amazon Prime.

Underwood isn't the most well-polished film you're likely to see, there are times when you're going to have to cut it some slack. The look of the film often gives away the fact that it was made on a low budget, and there are some sound issues - but if you can look past those issues and stick with it, you'll find that writer/director John McLoughlin has crafted an interesting supernatural mystery here, with the help of a volunteer cast and crew.

McLoughlin was drawing inspiration from the works of Alfred Hitchcock, Stephen King (I've seen him specifically reference a segment of Creepshow as inspiration), and Rod Serling while putting this movie together, and their influence is clear in the story. Michelle McCurry stars as popular author Samantha Rollins, who has found herself in a creative rut; she's having a tough time coming up with ideas. So she's hoping that spending some time at a secluded, lakeside cabin will help stir up her imagination.

Soon after arriving at the cabin, which has been uninhabited for a long time, Samantha finds an old Underwood typewriter in a locked box - and the audience already knows that she has been directed to this typewriter by the spirits lurking around this place. Also in the box are passionate love letters, which Samantha proceeds to read. When she sleeps, she dreams of the people involved with those letters - a man, a woman, and the man's odd, jealous brother - and when she wakes up she finds the typewriter has been used to write out chapters in the stories of their lives. Samantha has no memory of writing these pages every night, and if that happened to me I would be seeking the help of a neurologist immediately, but she rolls with it. The more she dreams of these people and the more pages are typed up, the more it becomes clear that she is being dragged into a real-life murder mystery. The story of how this place came to be haunted.

The murder or murders happened in the 1960s, and most of the locals Samantha interacts with during her stay at the cabin are old enough to have been around at that time. To have been involved. But which one will it turn out to be? The shady sheriff (played by Fernando Rio)? The grumpy old lady who's always mouthing off to everybody (Fran Rimondi)? Shopkeep Al? Some viewers may recognize William Grefe as Al, because Grefe's association with independent films goes back to the 1960s. I'm most familiar with Grefe's 1972 film Stanley, which is like Willard but with snakes instead of rats.

I was intrigued to see how the murder flashbacks would play out, and to see what sort of impact solving the mystery would have on Samantha's life in the present day. The payoff was worth the build-up, even if things get jumbled a bit in the final seconds.

I went into Underwood knowing that it was a five year labor of love that had been financed with credit cards, so I was prepared to make allowances for budgetary limitations. I kept technical expectations so low, as the movie went on I was repeatedly surprised by some of the things McLoughlin and his crew were actually able to pull off.

I was also impressed with some of the actors. Grefe is notable, of course, but I also thought that McCurry did quite well in the heroine role, and Rimondi was very funny as the grumpy, unpleasant Gladys. Michael Radford also makes an impression as a local named Tanner, who spends his scenes going back and forth between being likeable and being creepy.

Underwood is currently streaming on Amazon Prime, and if you're willing to overlook some technical issues I think it's worth a watch.