Movie Review: THE TOWN THAT TAKES

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: July 16th, 2026 / 02:49 PM

Rating: Not Rated
Stars: Britt Bankhead, Miles Mussenden, Grace Patterson, Mike Markoff, Nico Tirozzi
Writers: Britt Bankhead & Jon Blaze
Director: Britt Bankhead
Distributor: Atlas Distribution Company
Release Date: July 10, 2026

THE TOWN THAT TAKES begins with the following voiceover: “They say a whole colony vanished in 1587 … only thing they found was a single word caved into a tree, ‘Croatoan’ … The legend talks about a red-eyed demon – takes the form of people you know, steals kids, leaves nothing but silence. I used to think it was just a story. I don’t anymore.”

An emergency vehicle with lights on speeds down forest highway. A house on one side is surrounded by police tape. New-to-town chief detective Douglas O’Shea (Miles Mussenden) arrives on the scene and meets some of his staff, including Detective St. Clair (Grace Patterson) and Lt. Adams (Mike Markoff). There was a fire and there are scorched human remains, along with the word “Croatoan” and unfamiliar markings on the walls.

The fire investigator says this doesn’t seem to be a case of arson, and there’s no sign of how the fire started or what stopped it (as it’s a wooden house, it should have kept burning). This is an intriguing start, and we look forward to learning more, even if the answers are entirely supernatural.

The next day, we meet pre-teen Wyatt Richardson (Nico Tirozzi) by his mother’s grave in a cemetery. His heretofore absent dad, Dean Richardson (Britt Bankhead, who also directed and co-wrote the script with cinematographer/editor Jon Blaze) walks over from his car and says, “Sorry about your mom.”

We recognize Dean as the voiceover provider from the opening. After some squabbing with his own father, who would like custody of the boy, Dean takes Wyatt with him and heads on the long journey back to Georgia.

Wyatt isn’t too thrilled about being with his father, who he addresses by his first name. Trying for some bonding with his son, Dean asks to listen to the podcast on Wyatt’s earphones. It’s about skinwalkers, aka shapeshifters. The podcast says the only way to kill them is decapitation.

At the same time O’Shea and his unit come across a massacre in a convenience store, Dean and Wyatt check into a motel. Wyatt finds a brochure about Roanoke, the site of the lost colony. The desk clerk is perfectly helpful at first, but when Dean returns to ask about bath towels, he notices something strangely wrong with the woman.

Unlike most horror movie characters, Dean doesn’t FAFO. He grabs Wyatt and they race out of the motel, avoiding the front desk.

Right here, we’re ready to award THE TOWN THAT TAKES major points. It’s got a good what’s-going-on-here mystery and a protagonist who demonstrates common sense.

Unfortunately, right about here, the narrative begins to devolve. Neither Dean nor Wyatt ever recall the information from the podcast. This is psychologically understandable.

What’s very much not understandable is how, when two characters get into an off-road wreck, one is somehow found mid-nowhere and taken to the hospital, while the other regains consciousness alone in the upside-down vehicle.

It’s also not explained how the individual who wakes up in the truck knows to look for their missing companion in the emergency room, rather than in the forest near the crash site.

More questions pile up as to why this is happening now, why certain people are being targeted, why the police in what looks like a small town have a sizable SWAT team, and how the current goings-on (which don’t involve a town vanishing overnight) has to do with the legend of the lost colony.

A number of historians now believe that the missing colonists may simply have scattered and integrated into other communities. That can be ignored in the name of storytelling, but it’s harder to overlook the almost literal demonization of some Native Americans here.

It’s not absolutely necessary for a movie that opens with the enigma of Croatoan to put forth a theory relating to it, but it’s tough to get around the mounting incoherence that saps THE TOWN THAT TAKES of its initial momentum.

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