As I stated in my review for The Convent, when a successful film is released a lot of people jump on the bandwagon to sell their goods. However, unlike The Convent, this snake oil is putrefied.
There are only two minor elements within this picture that are decent. The first is the actor you portrays the literary agent. He's the only one in the cast who appears to take his craft seriously. Jon-Paul Gates isn't too bad as the lead Brendon but he does get wooden and hammy throughout the film. However, I cannot help thinking how much better this piece of trash would have been had the roles been reversed between these two.
Second is the filming - though only in a couple of scenes. The scene where Brendan meets with his agent. This is nicely directed and nicely shot. And there are a couple of drone-cam shots that work well also.
So that's the good bits over...
The story is horrendous. There's a scene where Brendon is talking to the local, walking-talking able-bodied mute paraplegic, harlot at his writing retreat. He informs her he never wanted to write horror he wanted to be more of a Dylan Thomas. He chose horror because it was easy. You take a few situations and put them together and hey-presto. This is how the writer and director (both loose terms here) Steven M Smith cobbled this monstrosity together. Well let me tell you Mr Smith Horror isn't easy but CRAP is, as you have proven here.
The characters and situations are ludicrous and unbelievable. The most realistic thing about this film is... the cottage. I had to think long and hard about that. But even the cottage isn't perfect. Places like these, that are let out to people as holiday homes or getaways, at least have some objet d'art in them. This house is cold and bare and devoid of any atmosphere... oh, was the cottage supposed to be an allegory of this film?
As for the relationships between the village folk and our hero well, strange is a word that comes to mind. For example, one moment he's wary of the roving and raving madman. The next they're knocking back a few in his cottage. No rhyme - No Reason.
This also falls into bad continuity. Which can also be laid squarely at Arthur The Doll's feet... literally. This doll, which is just a person in a wooden mask has a laughable way of moving around. He walks upstairs slowly, He nearly falls over when going around corners. And, when you get a shot down at his feet he does running baby steps. None of which screams walking doll at me. But why does he need to move around when he can magically teleport between reality and the mirror world(?) In one scene he appears in bed in the mirror but he's not in the bed in the room. Then he's in the bed in the room but not in the mirror bed. This carries on for a few cuts to drive our hero mad. However, if he has this wonderful ability why does he need to walk at all?
I will say this for Arthur though, he does like his hammers. He mainly dispatches his opponents by hammering them in the stomach... while they just calmly lay there and let him. But when Arthur transforms into giant Arthur his hammer becomes an iron mallet. Surprising thing is, the claw hammer could kill with a few taps of the hammer side, whereas, the mallet which is thrown full force squarely at our hero's head only knocks him out. The thing should have taken half his skull off.
So if you're still thinking about watching this rubbish then I wish you all the best of luck. This film stole an hour and a half from me. It doesn't have to steal it from you too. If you require a horror fix then feel free to pop over and check out my Absolute Horror List / Chart. You can see where this film ranked and choose something better to view.
This film is so bad I rated it a 1.5 which equates to a 2 on IMDb, but it's not worth a 2... I just can't do it.
