Directed By: Daniel DelPregatorio

Release Year: 2025

This Film Has No Known Audio Description

What Is it?: Marshmallow has caught a bit of attention in the same vein of Last Stop In Yuma County did last year, which also didn’t have audio description. Every person I’ve seen talk about this, avoids discussing what the film is actually about. So, the film takes place at a camp, where a group of kids face off against something they thought was just a creepy campfire story.

What Works: I’ll hand it to them. This does have a nice twist to it. Good luck figuring it out. It’s a secret worth keeping. And, yes, I was able to at least get the gist of where it was headed. I had a hard time following a lot of this, since it is shot like a horror film, and jump scares, and kill sequences abound. But, I did catch the ending, and from what I understand, there are a few visual cues we might have picked up on if we had audio description.

What Doesn’t Work: Just the lack of audio description. it is a much better than you might assume for its budget film, with a cast of kids capable of acting, and a script that shows off ingenuity if nothing else. But, to say I enjoyed myself being confused, or having a hard time following who just got attacked, or what the monster might look like, it just isn’t fun.

The Audio Description: I’m not sure how violent this film is. It has been referred to as “gateway horror”, which is a term often used for more widely accessible horror films that aren’t that scary. Think Gremlins, Beetlejuice, or even The Sixth sense. This isn’t the House That jack Built, for example.

Why You Might Like It: You’re not blind like me.

Why You Won’t Like it: even one of the best twists of the year isn’t enough to salvage the experience of being blind and listening to kids run around the woods… from something. Possibly getting picked off one by one. Who knows.

Final Thoughts: Films like this are disappointing for a whole different reason, because they remind us how we really only get to choose films from a preselected list of titles that bothered to have audio description, and when we stray form that path, no matter how interested we may be, the results are often too treacherous. This is even more true in the horror genre, which relies heavily on visuals to make it work. I probably would have liked this had I been able to follow the totality of it, but instead all I can really say is that the ending is as clever as it is rumored to be.

Rotten: 4.9/10