I was scrolling on Instagram yesterday and I came across this movie last night, normally I am not one to watch horror movies but something told me this one wasn't going to be like real horror horror, so I downloaded this movie late last night and I and my partner sat together to watch, trust me not to want to watch alone just in case it was indeed horror.
I have a few things to say about this movie, first of this movie felt stupid from the beginning, that my partner lost interest under 10 minutes, but I just told him to watch.
The story started with Lisa, a teenage girl being a loner, still grieving the loss of her mother who was murdered in her presence and she struggling to fit into her new blended family after her dad remarried and her new high school, she is very quiet, awkward, and she spends a lot of her time in an old abandoned cemetery, which honestly says a lot about how disconnected she feels from everyone around her, there is this one grave she keeps visiting that belongs to a young man from the Victorian era, and she starts talking to his grave statue like he is her only real friend, I remember thinking that okay, this is where it starts getting weird.
So, then comes the twist, a freak lightning storm strikes the cemetery, and somehow reanimates this Victorian era corpse and then he all of a sudden finds himself at Lisa's house, and instead of screaming and calling the police like any normal person would, Lisa basically accepted him in the house after a few screams here and there, she then hides him, cleans him up, and slowly forms a bond with him, despite the fact that he can't really talk very well and has a few missing body parts here and there, i will admit, the humor of that part is where the movie started winning me over a little, because it leaned so far into the absurdity of the situation instead of trying to make it feel realistic.
What was interesting, though, was how it makes the Creature, that's how they call him, the one who is not judging, not expecting normal behavior from Lisa- and how their relationship becomes, bizarrely, this dark, twisted version of teenage love- and how it definitely doesn't seem like it should have worked as well as it does.
I liked the fashion, the music, the 80s aesthetic, I liked everything about it really rather than it being a typical teen horror movie, Kathryn Newton did a great job with Lisa's arc as she grows more withdrawn and more sad to slowly be more in tune with her darker and more confident side as the film goes on, Cole Sprouse without uttering a single word made the Creature feel weirdly cute which was actually surprising me.
My partner who nearly gave up on the movie in the first 10 minutes, then seemed to start to catch the rhythm it had, when the killings and dark comedy began to get the ball rolling, and he still said it was stupid, well I think that is what this movie is, a little patience will make the movie make more sense to you.
I will say the tone did feel like it was in some places more of an emotional moment and in others it was an over the top silly moment, and that didn't always work well, there were tons of moments I wasn't sure if I should laugh or feel something deeper and it pulled me in and out of the movie at times and wasn't a seamless transition.
I do not regret watching it at the end of the day, though I wouldn't want to watch again another day , cos it was not the horror movie I was bracing myself for, and honestly, it was not trying to be, It was just something stranger.
So I don't think I will recommend anyone to watch it , but then , if you feel you enjoy dark humour , horror comedy, then maybe it can be worth it for you. This one wasn't really doing alot for me.
Imdb
