First let me say, most movie critics are idiots. Especially the ones on Rotten Tomatoes. Here’s an example. This crappy horror movie is getting 70%, yet About My Father is getting less than 30%. The Little Mermaid is below 70%. And you can’t say: “Well, you might just be a critic that doesn’t like horror movies.”
I don’t like horror movies that are derivative (this borrows heavily from The Sixth Sense and Babadook). I don’t like horror movies that aren’t coherent stories, or don’t follow their own rules. Had this been a story about how leaving the closet door open allows monsters to escape – I’d be on board. Even some of the rules they give us (that the creature won’t come out if a light is on), aren’t followed.
Three screenwriters (two of which wrote the overrated A Quiet Place) adapted this 1973 Stephen King short story into a cliche riddled movie.
We do have a bit of sympathy for the two young girls (Sophie Thatcher of Yellowjackets and Vivien Lyra Blair) and their father, played by Chris Messina (Air), as they’re dealing with the recent death of their mother.
The dad runs his psychiatric practice out of their home. When a weird guy named Lester Billings (David Dastmalchian) shows up, and goes all Sixth Sense on the Doc…things get crazy. In the Sixth Sense, it made sense when the patient killed himself. He was tired of being taunted by the ghosts he saw, and was mad at a doctor that didn’t believe him about the voices. This guy just decides to go into this house and trash the place before his suicide. That made little sense.
I wasn’t clear if Lester was supposed to be the one who brought the monster to this house because…Sawyer (the younger girl) is shown before that with lots of lights on in her bedroom and afraid of the closet. We’re also told the monster feeds on vulnerability.
One interesting set piece was a glowing orb Sawyer had with her since she was afraid of the dark. The movie starts with her kicking it into the open closet so it illuminates things. Yet it made no sense why, if she was so afraid of the dark, she’d play video games without a light on in the living room. It also made little sense why the teen girl goes into a basement when the light isn’t working (a horror movie cliche as old as the hills).
We also slowly find out this creature can imitate voices (both by the photos on a wall in a neighbor's house, and with a dorky ending). That made me wonder…why the creature didn’t imitate the dead mother to get the daughters to come into the dark basement or the room she used as an art studio.
So, if you like lazy jump scares, and lights that flicker and don’t turn on, and bad looking CGI monsters – this is the movie for you.
If you have an IQ over 100 and want more from a film, it’s best to avoid this.
And yes, it does have a barfing scene, because that seems to be a requirement in movies these days.
1 star out of 5.