PUCKWUDGIE

GREMLINS meets CRITTERS meets GHOULIES Mark, his wife Sarah, and their daughter Anna arrive at a quaint farmhouse on a rural farm property. From the luggage haphazardly stuffed in the trunk of the luxury sedan, it’s apparent they left their home in a hurry. We learn this is the home of Mark’s deceased grandparents who lived their entire lives here on this Indian reservation (Mark’s Indigenous ancestry is new information to his wife and daughter), and this is a hastily chosen destination for Mark to escape looming financial and legal problems related to his employment as an attorney in the city. Being awoken in the middle of the night, told to quickly stuff only the essentials into luggage, and driven from your home to an unfamiliar place you’ve never even heard about is bound to be stressful on a marriage, and the cracks in Mark and Sarah’s marital bond are quick to become evident. As both parents try to shelter Anna from whatever, to Sarah anyway, Mark is hiding about his ‘problem’ at work, tension builds up in the dilapidated farmhouse. As if the stress level isn’t high enough already, strange things begin happening to the new arrivals. There are strange bumps in the night and unseen creatures move in the tall grass around the property. Mark’s car keys go missing resulting in his inept trek through rough terrain and an impenetrable forest to discover a strange cave where apparently his missing keys have been taken. While Mark struggles to recover his missing keys and solve more domestic problems like a lack of groceries and a wife who has cut off communication with him, Anna discovers a mystery of her own: something seems to be beckoning her from the tall grass of the overgrown field behind the farmhouse, tempting her with prismatic reflected light that follows her through the windows of the old house. The growing tension gets a brief respite when Mark and Ann pay a visit to the reservation’s only store, the ‘Trading Post’ staffed by a enigmatic shopkeeper who supplies Mark with a foreshadowed warning: the woods around his family farm are populated by Pukwudgies, ancient and evil supernatural entities not to be trifled with. Amid these mysteries, Mark is brought back to crashing reality by the visit of a tribal police officer who informs him that a warrant for his arrest is pending. Back at the farmhouse, the tension culminates when Mark awakens to discover an other-worldly diminutive creature dragging his daughter away, only to be attacked himself by more of the little beasts. As Mark and Sarah barely repel a full out assault by the vicious creatures armed with crude spears and blowguns, the evil entities manage to whisk Anna away into the night. Disabled by the poison of the Pukwudgies’ blowgun darts, Mark is forced to stay behind while Sarah sets out for the dark woods to retrieve her kidnapped daughter. Sarah manages to fight off several more attacks by the short demons and enters the foreboding cave where she and Mark surmise the supernatural threat has originated. Mark, still at the farmhouse, near paralyzed by dart poison, is paid a return visit by the tribal police officer arriving with a warrant for Mark's arrest and the officer himself must defend against the primitive weapons of the Pukwudgie. Deep in the mysterious cave, Sarah encounters the ‘chief’ of the Pukwudgie, holed up in a cavern atop his horde of a hundred years of pilfered shiny trinkets, and the two negotiate a trade: Sarah’s shiny diamond wedding ring for the return of Anna. Bruised and battered, Sarah and Ann return to the farm to find Mark, groggy from the poison but alive. Mark decides that his notion of running from his problems is a fool's errand and encourages his wife and daughter to leave post haste. Sarah and Anna waste no time leaving the farm in the rear-view mirror. Mark assists the tribal officer, himself doped up with Pukwudgie dart poison, and resigns himself to face whatever fate the legal system has in store.