Stickman

We have all seen that horror movie where some dumb girlfriend goes into the creepy dark monster dungeon looking for her equally dumb boyfriend who was just killed by the monster only to be killed by the very same monster as punishment for being dumb. That is this movie, so you have already seen this movie. If I had to write a 2 page essay on the topic of what was unique about this movie, I would receive a failing grade. There is pretty much no question that this is a somewhat late attempt to cash in on the slenderman meme. If I had to describe the personalities of the lead characters in this film, the phrase "very afraid and doesn't want to die" would be used repeatedly. Many characters literally have no distinguishing personality traits beyond that. At least in crappy 80s horror there would be the jock and the bimbo and the nerd and the coward etc. Different characters to create some variety and keep that character interactions dynamic. The monster itself is a cartoon and the practical effects were basically the bare minimum (blood splatter, corpse without its head, etc.). Expect a lot of off screen deaths.

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

For a tv movie this is not too bad. The acting and script are a bit shoddy in places, but it is worth a watch. Definitely not the worse horror out there. I give this 4 out of 10 because horror is my preffered genre and there ars many greats. 4 being enjoyable but by no means great. If this had a bigger budget and a better script then could have been 5-6

I honestly enjoyed this movie,which is saying a lot when SYFY movies (and Canadian),are usually so bad.The acting was excellent and convincing,special effects were way above SYFY standard effects,as was the cinematography. Yes the story line was cliche'd as was the ending,but lets face it,you didn't watch it thinking this was going to be a masterpiece.I'm not going to sit here and over analylise it as one reviewer has,it's not that sort of movie,seriously dude,get a life.Take this movie for what it is,a pretty good horror movie worth a watch,enjoy.

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.