In short: Cabin Girl (2023)

Following a van accident she mostly doesn’t seem to be able to remember, Van Vlogger – this is indeed a thing in the real world – Ava (Rose Lane Sanfilippo) rebrands herself as a cabin vlogger. She buys an old cabin in the woods close to the place where she had her accident, to rest and recuperate from a head injury, but also because she simply feels drawn to the place.

Plus, the local mechanic Kellen (Austin Scott) is kind, sensitive, hot, and really into her.

Of course, this being a horror movie, Ava is soon plagued by visions of a dead young woman who likes to whisper about guilt. Turns out her cabin once belonged to a young woman who apparently committed suicide. Ava becomes obsessed with the spirit, and is quickly convinced the suicide was actually murder, and someone in town wants to keep things quiet.

While our heroine’s interest in the case turns increasingly unhealthy, an unseen stranger with an axe begins stalking her.

I really wouldn’t try to oversell Jon D. Wagner’s Tubi movie Cabin Girl. Streaming or not, this is a TV movie to its bones with the too pat and obvious writing and the Lifestyle movie type ideas about “craziness” that can entail. I can’t imagine many viewers who won’t see the final plot twist coming a mile away, despite some rather awkward attempts at distracting the audience from the obvious, and much of what happens on screen is realized competently more than anything else.

However, this isn’t a case of the dreaded “boring competence”. If you’re willing to buy into Cabin Girl’s basic and simple conceit, and can cope with its unideal depictions of mental illness (for me, it helps when said depictions are as crude as here), you actually can have quite a bit of fun with it. At the very least, it flows very nicely indeed. There’s apparently something to be said for a decent story competently told, or at least, in this case there is.

Sanfilippo certainly makes for the most likeable influencer I can remember having seen in a movie, and once it’s crazy time, she throws herself into that as well. More, I’m not going to ask of a nice, unassuming little movie like this one.