Director Aaron B. Koontz (Camera Obscura) teams up with Keith Lansdale (son of novelist Joe R. Lansdale) to bring us this horror-western mashup that I've been anxiously anticipating since I first learned about it some years back. Sadly, the movie doesn't quite live up to the potential the premise offered thanks mainly to a weak script and budget restraints.

The story follows a hardened gang of criminals, as they set their sights on robbing a train that's heading their way with a potentially big score. After taking over the train without a hitch, they come across a locked chest and discover a bound young girl imprisoned within it for some unknown reason. The precarious situation is made worse when the gang's leader is severely wounded. With no medic in sight the mysterious girl speaks up to reveal that if she's returned to her people they can tend to the leader's wounds.

It's not long before the group find themselves in a small ghost town; seemingly home to nothing more than empty buildings. That is until they reach the brothel in the center of town, which just so happens to be full of lively women eager to please their new found guests. Unbeknownst to the crew, these are no ordinary whores--in fact, they're not whores at all!--they're a coven of witches and the men are there just in time for the obligatory ritualistic sacrifice.

As much as I wanted to like the movie I had trouble getting into it at times, especially when almost every other scene looked like they were on a set. Obviously the movie is on a limited budget and normally I can overlook these things, but the look, along with some of the acting from key characters just took me out of it. While the men try their damndest to act tough, not all of them are believable doing so, which is sad considering the cast of semi-familiar faces.

The witches turned out to be another problem for me, as they didn't seem as menacing as they should've been. I'm more specifically referring to the witches that weren't in normal form and looked like they just got into Walmart's Halloween makeup supply. These witches seemed to exist simply to get blown away by the countless bullets shot by the gang. I'm not sure what their gameplan was because if they weren't slowly crawling towards the group and getting shot, they were running at the group and getting shot. Either way, they were nowhere near as threatening as they should've been.

Even if you can look beyond the budget restraints there's still the formulaic script, which I can go on and on about, but I don't want to focus any further on the negative, because it's not an entirely bad film. I can appreciate the filmmakers at least attempting to try something out of the norm with the underused western setting and throwing in a coven of witches. In the end, it's a fairly decent movie that's just entertaining enough to warrant a watch, but with more faults than it should have, resulting in it never quite reaching it's full potential.

The movie will be available in theaters, on Demand and Digital August 21, 2020.