A Story of Derry Review: Tazbah Chavez's Folk Horror

Hundreds of years before a certain shapeshifting entity made its home beneath the town, three youngsters venture into the Western Wood. Necani (Kiawentiio), Kino (Isabel DeRoy-Olson), and Maneese (Michael Podemski) are not would-be heroes; they're kids on the edge of a world that keeps shrinking around them. What begins as a tentative excursion - the kind of childhood dare that feels enormous and trivial at once - curdles into an encounter with a terrifying ancient spirit that has no interest in being named or understood.

Chavez keeps the plotting lean and the geography deliberately vague, which works in the film's favor. The Western Wood is less a place than a threshold, and the spirit that lurks there resists easy taxonomy. There's no exposition fairy here, no lore-dump to reassure you that everything will be explained by minute twenty-eight. Instead, the screenplay trusts the audience to sit inside uncertainty alongside three children who are, themselves, figuring out that the rules they've been taught don't apply out here.

The elders of the community - played with real gravity by Zahn McClarnon, MorningStar Angeline, Brandon Oakes, Jennifer Podemski, and Kimberly Guerrero - hover at the margins, offering fragments of warning that never quite cohere into a plan. That's the point. Adults in this world know more than they say, and what they say is less than what they fear.

The first thing you notice is the sound design. Chavez and her team build dread out of rustling undergrowth, distant bird calls that arrive at the wrong moments, and long stretches of near-silence that make you lean toward the screen. Cinematographically, the Western Wood is shot with a tactile closeness - bark, moss, breath fogging in cold air - that grounds the supernatural in the physical. When the spirit finally arrives, it's glimpsed more than shown, and the restraint earns its payoff.

The young cast carries a remarkable amount of the film's weight. Kiawentiio, in particular, plays Necani with a watchful stillness that reads as both courage and precognition; she seems to sense the shape of the story before the audience does. DeRoy-Olson brings a nervy energy as Kino, while Podemski's Maneese supplies the group's fragile bravado. Among the adults, McClarnon commands every second he's on screen without raising his voice, and Angeline's Sesqui lends the film its quietest, most unsettling grief.

Where the film stumbles is in the compression demanded by its thirty-minute runtime. The mystery elements - and this is genuinely a mystery as much as a horror piece - resolve with a haste that undercuts the patience of the buildup. A few threads involving the community's unspoken history feel introduced only to be dropped. And viewers coming to this expecting connective tissue with King's mythology will find the film pointedly disinterested in fan service; the "Derry" of the title is a place before it is a brand, and Chavez treats it with folkloric reverence rather than franchise obligation. It's a defensible artistic choice, but it will leave some subscribers cold.

Still, as a piece of mood-driven storytelling, it's accomplished. The dialogue is spare and believable, the pacing confident, and the final image lingers longer than a thirty-minute film has any right to.

Pros

• Superb sound design and tactile cinematography that make the Western Wood feel genuinely alive.
• Kiawentiio anchors the film with a performance of quiet, unnerving intelligence.
• Refreshingly uninterested in franchise fan service; treats its folklore with respect.
• McClarnon and the adult ensemble make the most of limited screen time.

Cons

• Thirty minutes is too tight for the mystery to breathe; the resolution feels rushed.
• A few narrative threads are introduced and abandoned without payoff.
• Viewers expecting Pennywise connections will be disappointed.
• The spirit itself, while effectively teased, remains a touch underdefined.

A Story of Derry is the rare short-form horror that treats its brevity as an aesthetic rather than a limitation - a chilling, beautifully crafted slice of folk horror that stumbles only when it tries to tie its mysteries into a neat bow. It isn't the definitive origin story some viewers might crave, but it's a haunting thirty minutes that earns its place in the dark. Recommended for anyone who prefers their dread slow-cooked and their monsters wisely kept at the tree line.