It Feeds, though standardly scripted and a little thin, is a well-produced, enlivened, unpredictable, and slightly emotionally adept horror feature about literally facing your demons. Therapist Cynthia Winstone (Ashley Greene) uses an extraordinary psychic ability to help her patients: she can telepathically help them rid themselves of traumatic manifestations, but anything that happens to her inside such as injury affects her in real life. Though she trains her daughter, Jordan (Ellie O’Brien), to do the same thing, Cynthia restrains herself because her husband, who shares this familial skill, killed himself years earlier because their telepathy also makes them vulnerable to actual paranormal evildoers. As this forms slight cracks in Cynthia’s relationship to Jordan, a kid named Riley Harris (Shayelin Martin) interrupts their daily routine. With skin-rotted scars across her arms, she demands Jordan for Cynthia’s immediate aid before her father, Randall (Shawn Ashmore), can keep her from getting any outside help. Seeing the situation’s graveness, Jordan rushes Riley to Cynthia, who is immediately frightened by a dark entity—a zombie-looking creature (bodied by Brooklyn Marshall and voiced by Sara Garcia) that invisibly absorbs humans as it groans, “Feed me.” With nothing but Cynthia’s matured ability, Jordan’s potential, and the support of a past client and unlikely friend named Agatha Baker (Juno Rinaldi), the Winstone family must defeat the greatest evil they’ve known in the past and the present.

Loss happens in everyone’s lives, but losing your dad to suicide because a paranormal entity consumed him is a unique form of it. While It Feeds is not exactly original, let alone creatively dialogued—”There are some things beyond help,” Cynthia tells her daughter, a line like many others already in one’s thoughts before it’s utterance—the actors understand the detrimental effects of such losses. With every defeated muscle-shrinking nod and vocally stretching screech, Ashley Greene illustrates the years-long effects of such a life-changer. In the aforementioned instance, despite the film’s less-than-tasty dialogue, Greene sells the elder Winstone’s sheer terror: with Jordan firmly in her grip, brows crinkle-slanted in both worry and unsettling familiarity, and a slight tremor in her delivery, Greene terrifies watchers as Cynthia as much as she does her own daughter. She has dealt with this before, and it shows.

O’Brien as Jordan is equally convincing; her slightly trained naivety, overshadowed by her loss and her mother’s (in)capability to deal with it properly, shines with every gesture. “You’re a coward,” an emboldened Jordan declares to her Cynthia with a raised chin, shaky-but-cocked shoulders and a stern gaze after an experience that would—and maybe should—freak out most kids too much, even if they’re older. She carries herself with a poise only passed on from parent to child or when kids have to find their own way, like she does with Cynthia. As the pair grapple with their current dangers, on top of core-jerking practical effects and jumpscares, It Feeds dishes out its strongest components in comprising this chilling, trauma-facing journey as perceived through an already devastating loss.

An intriguing dichotomy is also established between Randall and Cynthia. Cynthia could very well have treated the situation as Randall does if she didn’t have her powers; he becomes reckless out of desperation to save his family. Survival strips just about anyone of their morality and values, and Randall simply had nowhere else to go. His obsession grows as Cynthia and Jordan’s worries do as well: “This isn’t about you. Or her [Jordan, or my daughter], not anymore. This is about it,” a nerve-bungled, restrained Randall implores. When your entire life is consumed by such a life shattering presence—even if the demon were to cling to him—it’s hard not to fall into this pit of enraged despair. The only reason Cynthia doesn’t is because she has the means of helping. Randall can do nothing but scream as he loses like Cynthia and Jordan did long ago—perhaps emulating the kinds of reactions Cynthia had when her husband initially died.

Unfortunately, while these largely character-driven components enhance It Feeds, the film loses itself in its final act. While dialogue is disruptively bland throughout, when Cynthia enters the creature’s mind, things really go off the rails. Though it doesn’t lose grip of its obvious messaging—“I saw him. I saw my dad,” a crying Jordan belts out after destroying the creature and collapsing into Cynthia’s arms—a final fight that sees them in full The 100’s Lexa tribal militant gear with spears just feels silly. It becomes nonsensical how all of this mind entering works, flattened further by a predictable end to an already obvious story. Thus, for horror fans and those looking for a straightforward horror narrative with effective scares, It Feeds provides plenty to bite on. For anyone else, this is not much of a feast.

Opens in U.S. theaters April 18th