A Creature Was Stirring review by Bobby Blakey
Well Go USA isn’t just known for their martial arts films, but also a variety of horror flicks. Their latest, A Creature Was Stirring looks to bring more horror to their resume and stars Chrissy Metz, Scout Taylor-Compton, Annalise Basso and Connor Paolo from first feature director Damien LeVeck with creature design and effects by award-winning SFX artist and Face-Off alumni Tate Steinsiek. Could this film bring something fresh to wreak havoc in the holidays or will it roll into obscurity?
A Creature Was Stirring follows Faith who keeps her troubled teenage daughter on a tightly controlled regimen of experimental drugs, their only means of fending off a mysterious, terrifying affliction. But after two burglars attempt to rob the home on Christmas, they stumble upon a long-kept family secret—with monstrous consequences.
Anytime we get some sort of creature feature I am all in especially with more practical effects. I was looking forward to this film and hoped it had something special to help it stand out as a new horror holiday classic and while it does on some level it also struggles to get out of its own way as well. A lot of the issues come in the form of people’s reactions and behaviors that I felt were off until the truth is revealed and it makes more sense.
The story seems simple enough and only uses the holiday theme as a background and not any real part of the narrative. This film could have taken place at anytime and told the same story as long as it was snowing for the reasoning of getting these people together. The strange behaviors and mystery begin right away letting you know something is amiss and leading
you to believe you know what that is with little mystery or so you think.
The tone of the film is all over the place at times and I believe on purpose trying to set the chaotic nature of what is going on at the forefront, but it gets bogged down by nonsense sometimes. Especially when you understand the final act there are some story elements that seemed unnecessary other than to feed the possible twist to the story that may or may not actually happen. I will say with the ending it does mostly all come together well and offer up a finale that is fun and unexpected to some in a good way.
Big props to the practical effects that always make things better. The creature is creative and pretty cool most of the time with only a few moments of silliness. I think that comes down to budget and purposeful execution for the effect they are going for. The camera work on the creature was used intelligently to capture the effectiveness of the practical effects without showing too much too often. A lot of it had an old school horror vibe that I dug and ended up being a worthy creature feature in the end.
Outside of the uneven story elements my biggest issue sometimes came with the color palette they were using. There were so many moments where the entire scene was lit with green or red and not sure if they were going for the holiday tone, 80s Creepshow or just its own thing. It looks fine, but leaned a bit too much into it for me, but not in a way that hurt the film itself in the end.
I was hoping for a lot more than what this film delivered, but at the same time I had a decent time. I was leaning one way with the whole thing until the ending which pulled me in a bit more and elevated it in a smart way so if you decide to give it a chance stick it out to the end. It’s not bringing anything overly new to the genre, but it is a good flick,
Decide for yourself and check out A Creature Was Stirring available now on Blu-ray and DVD from Well Go USA.