Grimcutty

I don't know if this was some millennial attempt at being modern and hip to old boring same-ol-same-ol horror tropes. To their credit, it was well mad cinematicly, the writing didn't hurt, and the acting wasn't as bad as most horror films of this nature. The narration being done in ASMR knocked off most of the stars from my rating. It was like Chinese water torture on my ears. I had to mute the tv and read the subtitles at one point. It was so distracting trying to remember most of the rest of the movie when it ended in a "dramatic" monologue addressed to the audience and their parents. All in ASMR whispering and finger rubbing. I just couldn't.

As much as I thought that this might be ok it seemed to be a wasted opportunity. Shannyn Sossamon couldn't save this mess even thought she was great to watch. The flip she made at the end was worth the wait. However The father of the main character was more scary than the over produced 'scary' villain. He was a painfully bad actor and never quite nailed the anxious parnet. Save your time and just give this a miss. Or better still watch the first ten minutes and then skip to the las ten. I felt like this made it bearable to watch and process. While this was a miss it does get points for diversity the main character were brown with non mainstream names. However I wonder if this was another stab at ethnic standards and 'controlled kids' I'll give it the the benefit of the doubt.

This isn't the worst movie I've seen recently, but like most movies coming out these it's just not good. There's a kernel of a good idea here that just is never fully developed in order to get to a quick resolution that doesn't have any kind of logic behind it.

The characters just don't have anything to make them unique or make you care. I've noticed this in almost all the movies I've seen from the last few years. Writers have forgotten how to write compelling characters we care about. Nobody has any personality and characters are just introduced with no backstory like we're supposed to just naturally connect with them. This is one of my biggest pet peeves in film these days. You can get around a lot of bad writing and low budgets if you just have compelling characters and good actors. The craft has been lost.

The plot is basic and tries to carry some message about parents getting over protective about technology and social media trends, but it just doesn't land. None of the plot points are developed well and the story jumps from point A to point D and never explains how we got there. This was obviously put together with no passion just to get something out there. Lazy

The horror elements are PG at most. We never see much of anything. The monster looks ridiculous more than scary. Again some of this could have worked if anyone cared enough to put a little time and effort in.

All in all this goes in the trash heap of streamer movies. It's obvious that with the streaming wars in full force the goal for all of them is just to have a mountain of content. It doesn't matter if any of it is actually good. Just rush out a bunch of amateurish content to show how much you have to offer. It's just all so bad.

Not the worst movie but not worth wasting time on and will be forgotten before I finish typing this.

I had to laugh at this premise, yeah he is creepy looking but I'm a horror buff on all kinds of scary movies so maybe I'm desensitized more than the average.

But I'll say here that the writing the dialogue was pretty bad and it kind of jumps out at you. I like Shannon Sossaman in the movies she's grown up playing a mom here, but even she couldn't save the movie.

It wasn't so much the Grimcutty character I mean he was well done and with another better script it could have been decent, along the lines of Lights Out or The Boy along those lines but this one was silliness to me. Kind of insulting.

The storyline is good, the acting is decent, the cinematography is even done well. The reason it didn't get at least 8 stars? The "Grimcutty" character looked like a 5 year old with a creation app made it on the fly one day. It looks so incredibly fake that I couldn't take it seriously. It honestly looks like someone took Gru from the Minions movies and got him possessed by a demon. I can better appreciate a horror monster that looks like it COULD be real - this was done terribly...I have seen better and more realistic Halloween costumes.

I ONLY recommend this movie on the chance that you can ignore how crappy the villian is. As I stated above, good plotline, good camera work and decent acting...they just lost the ball with the title character.