Come Play - Gioca con me

I kinda forgot how the story went but i'm pretty sure this is just Babadook with iphones and fwends. The sfx isn't that great and some of the characters actions are questionable, but the spooks are pretty good, just the right amount of cheap jump-scares and smart atmospheric spoopiness here and there. Still, if you haven't seen Babadook i'd recommend that over this.

I did not have much hope going into this, i thought it was just going to be another haunted child retread but I was wrong, the idea was refreshingly new and had quite a few wrinkles I have not seen before; loved the scene with the paper blowing in the wind and eventually sticking to the Demon and revealing its body in the first few scenes, a rather nice touch, simple but effective.

And that is what the film is, simple but effective, a decent nights horror viewing with at least 2 rather nasty jump scares that did actually make us jump so a fair above average 6 hatchets on the chopping scale for this one!

While we all want something terrifying from the horror films we watch, it is nice to get some psychological and emotional aspects intertwined within the scares to give it that extra depth. This particular story is very reminiscent to Mike Flanagan's style where he places just as much importance into the heart and soul of the characters as the amount of detail in the creepy creatures or hauntings. It's definitely a great and promising first feature effort from Jacob Chase.

The film still does have its classic clichés with many predictable timed jump scares and the all too common tech themes of late , but it still wraps everything together nicely with some interesting concepts. There are some tremendous moments of authentic emotion portrayed by the main actors as well which is an underrated aspect especially in horror films. There's also a very interesting entity with a great backstory with some decent enough CGI to present it. The atmosphere and tension is prevalent and there are some clever camera choices.

Overall it's way better than many will think it will be after seeing the very cliche trailer, and people shouldn't take it for just a kids horror. If this is the one wide release horror film we get for Halloween, it does serve its purpose well enough.

I've seen better and worse, but for what it is, as a PG-13 horror movie, I think it does really well. It's short on scares, so don't go into this hoping to be scared out of your mind, but I think the emotional power that the message conveys is definitely worth a viewing. Definitely struck my heart strings by the ending. It's definitely derivative of several movies, but it's pretty good for sure.

Most characters have a story arch which is a rare thing in recent movies. The plot is simple and very predictable, but it doesn't hurt the overall enjoyment of the flick.

The horror is tense yet offers nothing new to the genre. The monster's design could remind you of some early 2010 creepypastas (you decide if that's good or bad to you).

Overall, it resembles The Babadook (2014), switching the book to everyday tech.