Claire (Renee Willner) and her boyfriend Paul (Danny Alder) travel to her remote family home to visit her ailing grandmother (Dawn Klingberg, TIL HUMAN VOICES WAKE US), who lives with her father Bill (Peter Stratford, BLOOD MONEY) and sister Jen (Taryn Eva). Claire wants to ask her grandmother about the mysterious urn that her grandmother sent her a month before. Her grandmother tells her that she expects to die soon and that she will be taken away by a woman who wails for the dying. That night, the family is woken by a howling sound in the woods. Paul, Bill, and Jen's boyfriend Simmo (Mark Taylor) go out into the woods in search of the sound (but only two come back). Left alone with her grandmother, Claire witnesses the arrival of the banshee (Bridget Neval) but she interferes in the creature's plans to carry away the dying woman. In retaliation, the banshee calls upon a horde of evil spirits (and a couple zombies) to lay siege upon the house. Even if the blurb "Sick of waiting for EVIL DEAD 4, check out DAMNED BY DAWN" had not been splashed across the poster art, horror fans would have very little (very, very little) trouble recognizing the film's obvious inspiration. Willer has an "Ashley Laurence in HELLRAISER" look going on, but soon enough she's wandering fog bound woods spattered in blood like Bruce Campbell in the first EVIL DEAD film and possessed Nana is not that far off from a Deadite (she even says "Join us"). The foggy exteriors and hurtling camera moves (when they're not CGI-rendered) also hearken back to the Raimi film, but the banshee looks like a Halloween costume, or perhaps the CGI wraith of awful DARKNESS FALLS. The flying CGI evil spirits are well-rendered for the budget but unoriginal. The high definition cinematography (shot on the HVX-202) is atmospheric thanks to the color correction and some great locations (the blue-lit night interiors also have an admirable eighties horror look to them). The surround sound design is good (particularly the first cries of the banshee), but the ending theme song is the only distinctive part of the score. The performances are at the mercy of flat characterization (Klingberg has the most to work with, Stratford does what he can, and Willner's performance is a string of reactions). DAMNED BY DAWN is no EVIL DEAD 4. Director Brett Anstey merely distilled elements of the Raimi films into a proficient low-budget film that is on-par visually with some studio direct-to-DVD horror sequels. It would be interesting to see what Anstey and co. could do with a more interesting and original script and the same resources.