Tate James (Josh Truitt) is the town prankster. When he goes out on a campout with his brothers Nate (Noah Truitt) and Gabe (Gabe Truitt), as well as local friend Hammy (Brenton Houvenor), things start to get crazy on their walk home. They discover an Indian burial site with a skeleton gripping a spear and Tate insists on prying it loose. Soon after, he discovers that it, along with a special whistle, allows the bearer to transport himself through space. Unfortunately, it also frees a man who's been imprisoned in another dimension, the deadly Marshall Blackburn (Joe Truitt). The Marshall will stop at nothing to get the spear back from Tate, even whisking away the entire town to the alternate dimension he was trapped in to isolate Tate until he can finish him off. In the end, only Tate's wits will give him a chance to best the evil Marshall.
This film definitely seemed to be inspired by classic boy bonding movies from the early '80's like Stand By Me, with a heavy dose of the Goonies thrown in for good measure.
With that said, the writing of this film was a mixed bag. The screenplay was crafted by Joe and Josh Truitt. (I'm guessing father and son, due to the ages of the characters they play in the film.) At times the script kept things well in sight, and other times it seemed to ramble heedlessly out of control. A series of scenes in the film suffer from extremely long, unfocused discussions that were a combination of an overly wordy script and some acting problems from untrained actors. (For future films, when using untrained actors, it's best to keep dialogue very short so that memorization and delivery is easier.) It's quite possible that these scenes were intended to be long and rambling, because that's how young boys really do talk. This is where film and reality must diverge. To maintain an audience, the writer has to catch the high points of a conversation so that the audience can easily follow it and so that they don't become bored. (Real conversations are quite dull to overhear, unless one happens to come in at the right moment. That's the goal of the scriptwriter—to permit the audience to eavesdrop on just the right bits of information to excite them and make them curious.)
I really appreciate the way this film was set up because it was definitely a family affair. (I think I only counted four people on the cast who didn't have the last name "Truitt.") This doubtlessly yielded an intense and educational experience about filmmaking to all involved. With that said, due to the fact that it was kept as insular in most of the casting as a family unit, the acting abilities were quite green. As such, there were a number of conversation scenes in which the point got lost by the deliveries. One scene in particular occurred at Tates' grandfather's cabin where all the boys are telling stories that ramble so far afuekd that the audience quickly loses interest. The issues with acting could've been improved on with additional camera angles recorded, so that a longer piece of dialogue could be stitched together with different takes and some of the rambling could be cut out.
