Stickman

I went into this with no bias, no expectations. Pleasantly surprised and entertained. Sure, this is a made for TV movie and no it's not star studded.....big deal. If you are truly a fan of the genre then celebrate all the efforts! I recommend this based on the story alone...no expectations.

Saw 'Stickman', being fond of horror regardless of budget (even if not my favourite genre) and being intrigued somewhat by the idea. Being behind on my film watching and reviewing, with a long to watch and review list that keeps getting longer, it took me a while to get round to watching and reviewing it.

Giving 'Stickman' a fair chance with being interest and apprehension, it turned out to be far better than expected. Won't say that 'Stickman' is a great film because it isn't and the potential, while not wasted, is not fully lived up to. Considering the large number of films seen recently being mediocre and less and wasting potential, was expecting worse and was relieved that while wanting in a fair few areas it was actually one of my better recent low-budget viewings.

'Stickman' started off quite well, the first twenty minutes or so starting the film off on a promising, unsettling and atmospheric note that really does intrigue.

Production values did have some eeriness and nowhere near as cheap as expected, and the music, which not the most memorable in the world, didn't detract from the atmosphere.

The setting is effectively spooky and some of the lead acting at times was not bad. There are spooky and suspenseful moments and it isn't dull. The direction doesn't feel phoned in and the storytelling in the first half does intrigue.

However, the story was severely wanting in the second half after starting off promisingly. It is very disjointed and after the promising start the final third especially loses atmosphere, one loses interest and things start to not make sense. Too much of the film is vague and doesn't explore some elements and story strands enough, some dropped soon after being introduced, go nowhere or serve much point.

Ending is unsatisfying, on top of feeling hasty there are too many loose ends hanging in the air. Got the sense that the writers didn't know how to end the film. Would have liked much more tension and suspense, scares could have been more consistent and some weren't surprising enough.

Found too the script to lack natural flow and with a fair bit of cheese going on, and the characters bland with some adopting some annoying and not always logical decision making. The support acting is even more problematic than the second half's storytelling, at best it was poor and too often terrible.

Overall, better than expected but not great still. 5/10 Bethany Cox

RELEASED TO TV IN 2017 and written & directed by Sheldon Wilson, "Stickman" chronicles events when a 7 year-old girl is accused of murdering her mother & sister and put in a mental institution. She's finally released ten years later and finds residence at a halfway house for girls. Unfortunately, the evil spirit that slew her kin is on the loose again and threatens all the girls at her new residence. A few of them travel back to the hospital to find a way to put an end to the creature's reign of terror.

There's a lot of good in this flick: The filmmaking is proficient for a TV-budgeted movie; the locations are decent, which include the asylum, the transitional home, and points in between, like the town and the woods (there are several cool shots of a truss bridge in the dark); it's nice to have a black protagonist for a change (Hayley Law); the five other girls at the halfway house are all regular lasses with no stereotypical "hottie," although a few of them COULD have played that role (e.g. Sara Garcia, Sarah Fisher, Zoé De Grand Maison, etc.).

In addition, the film successfully creates a spooky ambiance here and there, e.g. in the woods near the psyche facility; and the demon is pretty effective for a CGI monster, coming across as a meshing of the demon from "Scarecrow" (2013), the aliens in "Signs" (2002) and maybe Freddy Krueger (i.e. the claws).

Unfortunately, I didn't buy the premise behind the creature, which came across as half-baked gobbledygook; the poem that unleashes the demon reads like it was written by a 13 year-old and the climatic explanation didn't resolve the overall ill-conceived impression. This naturally hinders the movie from being engaging; it limits the thrust of events and therefore suspense.

Note to emerging filmmakers: Work the kinks out of your premise BEFORE making the movie. The director, Sheldon Wilson, needs to work on his scriptwriting skills because the movies he writes tend to be problematic story-wise ("The Hollow," "The Night Before Halloween," "Neverknock" and this one) while his movies written by others can be quite good for TV-budgeted flicks ("Mothman," "Red, Werewolf Hunter" and the aforementioned "Scarecrow," which is excellent).

Lastly, the final scene is predictably lame. Still, there's enough good here to make "Stickman" worthwhile for those who appreciate these kinds of flicks.

THE FILM RUNS about 89 minutes. There's no info on where it was shot, but since this is a Canadian production it might've been somewhere outside Toronto.

GRADE: C

This was actually a rather surprisingly nice movie for a SyFy production. Yeah, they usually put out some rather questionable movies. But every now and again they do strike gold, and they happened to do so with "Stickman".

Sure while the storyline was generic as in terms of horror movies go, but it was still an entertaining movie.

They had some nicely talented acting performers to fill out the various roles and characters. I will say that the performance level was quite adequate all-round.

There was a good continuous flow to the storyline, which made for better enjoyment of the movie, for sure.

And the creature itself was actually rather nicely made. And this being a horror movie, you of course need to have a proper scary creature or special effects. SyFy did manage to deliver here.

So you might want to sit down and watch "Stickman" if you enjoy a good old fashioned creature feature.

Perfect middle of the day, off from work, nothing else on type of movie. Not bad, but not great either. On par with Crooked Man. Nowhere near as good as The Babadook.