Film Reviews by NP

Four wide-eyed girls bid farewell to their parents as they embark on a trip together, promising to be good. As soon as their parents are out of sight however, rock music hi-jacks the soundtrack, off come most of the clothes, their walk turns to a swagger: instant transformation! They’re not such good girls after all.

They have names, but that’s all that separates them. This important character-establishing time is taken with sardonic asides and pouting. When a lot of attention is devoted to ramifications of the inevitable ‘I have to go pee’ line, you know development is hardly at the forefront of the minds of those who filled their time writing this.

Technically, the blurring and cutting off of voices and soundtrack are so glaring, they appear to be an artistic decision. In no time at all, their stay at a cabin in the woods has become a series of grunts, modulated and looped shrieks, incomprehensible and occasionally creepy images and repeated scenes, often too dark to make out. The girls, in their tiny shorts, react and become more entwined with the growing evil.

This is nearly an interesting exercise in nightmare – in the kind of delirious, unnerving crash-chaos and gory hellish manner as practiced by ‘Evil Dead (1981)’ or ‘The Grudge (2002)’. Although the tumbling into spiralling horror is frightening in its turgid confusion, and indeed tries to emulate effects on moments from the afore-mentioned films, sadly, it succeeds mainly in testing the patience.

I think the problem – and I do salute director and writer Michael and Gerald Crum for attempting an ongoing fevered nightmare that defies structure – is that there is no middle ground. One minute, we are in the bland land of badly-defined sexualised teen-girls rebelling – the next, and with no preparation, we are given all-encompassing noises and images and incoherence only to be found in the depth of nightmare. What characters there were become garbled mannequins, their unfathomable plight only scattered with occasional meaningless dialogue. The ending, when it comes, happens mid-sentence. Perhaps a little less trying to be weird and a little more help for the audience to know what it is supposed to be afraid of would help ‘Cypress Lake’ communicate the scares it batters us over the head with, with more success.

Get a group of males together round a table, give them a pack of cards, and they think they’re Al Capone. In a flashback to 1927 and a lengthy gambling session, the owner of the island on which their den is based, gambles the entire property away and then, pretty unhappy with the situation, shoots himself. Subsequent shadowy noises suggest his spirit remains, however.

Back up to date and much of the interest the story has thus far garnered evaporates sharply with the seemingly inevitable introduction of the standard ‘group of friends’ – and yet these ‘standard’ people have no names; instead they are all ‘dude, bro, man or chicks (plural)’ – or occasionally ‘a**hole’ (one of them is called Mike, played by someone called Randy Wayne unsurprisingly; as the sensible one, he may be slightly less moronic than the others). Not one of them isn’t punch-able. Blemish free, horny, rock kids with no personality but the ability to remind you at every turn, that if they really existed, you’d cross the road to avoid them. You just know there’ll come a time when one of them ‘has to pee’ – and sure enough, that box is ticked too. Lance Henrikson, who is a universe better than this party-fuelled shallow mid-island sweaty nonsense, makes a few appearances. But we don’t see much of him – there is so much more happening, man: the kids are getting drunk and stoned.

What on Earth makes directors/producers (Marty Murray) feel the necessity to clog up their projects with a host of personality-free, manicured non-descripts and drag their work down to the same level as every other such film? The quest to attract the opposite sex knows no bounds here. Powder-puff catwalk girls look coy as hunky males eye up their ‘candy asses’ (everybody probably works out when not copping off). Guys brag about chicks checking them out and pout sulkily when other chicks dismiss the idea due to jealousy. This pristine bubble of a world is crying out to be punctured.

Back in 1972, low-budget exploitation guru Pete Walker produced ‘The Flesh and Blood Show’ for about a fraction of the time and budget it took to cobble this shallow nonsense together. It wasn’t perfect, but made much better use of an isolated seaside theatre for some good creepy moments.

Although some effort is clearly made towards the end to inject some excitement into the proceedings (there is an effective moment when an army of ghosts watch the departing survivors from the water, but even the ghosts are good looking!), this is mainly dross – a routinely constructed tension-free horror with a cast of posturing cretins, scarce chills, and is ultimately a slick waste of time that leaves you gagging for it to end long before events stutter to a dribbling climax and soft-rock at last brings down the curtain.

This is a hidden gem of a production directed by Dominic Brunt, who in his ‘day job’ plays Paddy in missable UK soap opera ‘Emmerdale’. He has directed a number of horror films, and this one concerns two brassy market stall girls and what happens when they are blackmailed.

To begin with, this runs as a convincingly comedic venture with Bex (Victoria Smurfit) and Dawn (Joanne Mitchell) trying to keep their market stall afloat whilst fending off coarse but pretty hilarious amorous advances of low life customers (including eccentric oddball comedian Charlie Chuck as Nev). They also need to escape the extortion racket carried out by local villain Si (Adam Fogerty). Jeremy (Jonathan Slinger), a smiling charmer enters their lives and appears to have the answer to their problems.

Events twist and the reveals are rarely less than disastrous for the two leads. It seems extreme measures are needed.

The comedy just manages to stay the right side of reality – Bex and Dawn are necessarily sharp-talkers, living in an area crawling with men who simply want them for one thing. They have become ‘master of the put-down’, and they are extremely witty. When events become darker, and their families (including Dawn’s autistic son and eccentric mother played by Rula Lenska) are threatened, it is impossible not to wish Si and his blackmail racket a bloody, gory destruction. Whether or not that happens, is not for me to say – but there’s an animated sequence following the end credits that is not to be missed.

Great fun.

After a terrific opening involving a charismatic cop Detective Mark Lewis (Frank Grillo) investigating a houseful of apparent corpses, we flit back in time to find out how the tragedy occurred. Here, my heart momentarily sank, as it seemed we were to be treated to the dreaded ‘group of friends’ prevalent in films like this: fast-talking picturesque teens all bitter and moody because of some banal relationship disaster (one of the number, Michelle (Cody Horn) is secretly pregnant). But luckily, ‘Demonic’ only flirts with such soap-operatics to establish the characters before flitting back and forth to an interview with the only survivor, John (Dustin Milligan). Such back and forth shenanigans ensure you have to pay attention, which is of course, No Bad Thing. John, the poor sap, is being interviewed by psychologist, Dr. Elizabeth Klein (Maria Bello), who informs him he may go to jail as a result of the carnage and no other suspects.

I enjoyed this for many reasons. It’s dark and gritty, like a supernatural version of something like CSI and other punchy police dramas the US do so well. It is also set in Louisiana, a locale that brings happy memories of ‘The Mummy’s Curse (1944)’ – it may be by the Kharis association, but the raw, humid, swampy location seems to work well with this kind of horror. Also, the acting is universally good, with the young cast soon shaking off the shackles of initial worries concerning precocious, bland stereotypes. The production as a whole is polished and foreboding, faced-paced and atmospheric. Will Canon does an excellent directing job; all scenes are packed with visual interest that highlights every cobweb and speck of dust in the ramshackle house.

As the title suggests, demonic rituals appear to have been carried out at the remote house the five friends investigate. Unwisely, a séance is carried out which appears to unleash all kinds of spirits, none of them you would want to share an elevator with. Familiar jump-scare-tactics – upturned crucifixes, slamming doors, hideous faces in mirrors, use is even made of found-footage filming to confound what we think we know – all of these are used restrainedly and against a backdrop of convincing grit and gloom. There’s even a twist ending.

‘Demonic’ doesn’t set the world on fire, but is a fine, solidly produced way of spending 83 minutes.

This follow-up to the ground-breaking film that introduced many of us to the Found Footage concept is a ‘fictional re-enactment of events following the events of The Blair Witch Project.’

It starts promisingly, with Burkittsville residents being irritated and financially bolstered by the notoriety their town has attracted. Some dialogue is rank, (“There are always naysayers who come here and say … nay.”) and the characters are pretty unlikable and stereotypical (we are introduced to Kim (Kim Director) lying back on a grave, smoking, dressed all in black and daubed with heavy make-up – so she’ll be a goth then). Erica (Erica Geerson) is a Wiccan and therefore sensitive to whatever ‘curse’ may or may not be out there. They seem to be a bit stoned and listen to rock music and might possibly have just stumbled off a catwalk. Text book, picturesque teens. A disappointing development after the realism displayed by Heather, Mikey and Josh from the original.

This is a major flaw. Main character Jeffrey (Jeffrey Donovan) has a history of hospitalisation and is victimised by the local Sherriff (who seems to have strolled straight out of ‘The Dukes of Hazzard’). And yet because of his uncharismatic, postured playing, it is impossible to sympathise with, or feel anything for him or his plight. Tristine (Tristine Ryler) is really the only sympathetic, or realistic character present …

And yet, this sequel is undeserving of the critical drubbing it has received. It has some great unnerving moments: the stuttering doll-like creature Tristine sees in the hospital, the image of her drowning her dead, bloodied baby in a stagnant pond (would anyone who suffered a miscarriage during such an unnerving trip seriously then consider continuing with that trip?), the slow drifting into delirium … and the ending, where the group watch the recording they made of themselves and it contradicts their memory of events is a pretty neat way to wrap things up.

The temptation could have been to produce another docu-drama, but events here are deliberately stylised in such a way, the audience is in no doubt it is watching a professional production.

The locations are excellent and the whole production is very well shot, but I think ‘Book of Shadows’ is a (perceived) failure because while it is good, it isn’t brilliant – and it needed to be brilliant to match the virtually insurmountable success of the first.

“She’s a witch, maaan!”

This is a curious film that seems to be about many things, at least initially. Tyler (Stephen Chambers) sees his mother dead on the landing of his family home. She has overdosed on pills apparently, and the realisation sends him on a nervous break-down. When his friends come round, he is hiding in a cupboard. When they try to help him, he attacks them with a knife.

A while later, Tyler has seemingly recovered, helped by a course of therapy. To build bridges, he and his friends agree to meet in a snowbound retreat for a ‘boys’ weekend’. They seem to be a tight group, and soon, Tyler is back at the heart of the friendship – only Everett (James Gilbert) seems to want to scupper things; he seems determined to ply him with alcohol, which is inadvisable given Tyler’s course of medication.

Big lad Bobcat (Matthew Amyotte) sports a bald plate that is never, ever convincing. It is a curious directorial decision, but made so we can hear dialogue about baldness keeping him virile and ‘having the kids to prove it’ (which is an unknowing dig at Jim (Glenn Matthews), who is secretly impotent). All this spurs on further antagonism later.

So when Tyler, outside in the wastes alone, finds what appears to be a corridor in the middle of the woodland, he feels his sanity crumble. And yet he proves to be the only one who can see through the violent chaos that ensues between the group.

Sadly, at least for me, the latter half of the film dissolves into a trippy mesh of special effects and shouting. This would appear to be a logical progression from the enjoyably illogical events that lead up to it, but I found these developments less satisfactory, although Tyler’s story at least achieves a sense of closure within the chaos.

Samantha (Najarra Townsend) is a somewhat prickly, somewhat supercilious, usually unimpressed party girl who only has eyes (and smiles) for assured posh girlfriend Nikki (Katie Stegeman) – who is even less pleasant that she is! After being stood up at a party, Samantha has unprotected sex with BJ (Simon Barrett) – who may or may not have spiked her drink - only deciding against the idea once he is on top of her in the back of his car, the windows having had time to heavily steam up.

Seemingly as a result of this, Samantha begins to suffer a series of increasingly harrowing afflictions – heavy loss of blood, tinnitus, disorientation, cramps, heightened veins, hair-loss etc. Despite Samantha’s lofty characteristics, Townsend plays her very well and it is impossible not to empathise with her when her illness spirals out of control. What helps our empathy is the furthering reveal of Nikki’s character as utterly self-absorbed, and try as she might, Samantha will never figure in her life because she (Nikki) is always entirely preoccupied with herself and her sexuality.

To discuss the character of BJ– ‘Contracted’ opens with a scene of him having sex with a corpse in the mortuary where he works. It’s actually quite difficult to work out what is happening, which is a shame as the whole reason for Samantha’s decline is based on this detail. It is interesting that, for all his notoriety, we never clearly see his face (in the sequel, he is even played by a different actor).

Another slight issue I have is that the unfortunate girl’s physical decline is not always entirely consistent- sometimes her teeth are blackened, sometimes not; her eyes deteriorate into whiteness only to improve before deteriorating in the next scene. This isn’t a major problem by any means; it just means her transition from living to ‘other’ isn’t always a smooth one!

As a diary of what happens when pretty people are not so pretty anymore, this is interested and wince-inducingly watchable. It reminds me of 2012’s ‘Thanatomorphose’, which also features a young woman becoming increasingly decomposed and attempting to handle the situation alone. Here, the attitude of Samantha’s unsympathetic doctor (who judgementally suspects an STD) and mother appears to explain her reticence to seek further outside help.

Written and directed by Eric England, the first sequel (‘Phase II’) was released in 2015, and a further instalment is due for late 2017. I thoroughly enjoyed this, not ever knowing where the story was headed – instead, just ‘enjoying’ Samantha’s turmoil. Whether any explanations as to the nature of the malady will be revealed doesn’t really matter as long as the story is this horrifying and enjoyable.

Lovely big smiley Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney), the unlikely son of diminutive Lord John Talbot (Claude Raines), returns to his vast family home in Llanwelly, Wales, to commiserate the death of his brother John. Whilst idly toying with the magnificent and outsize telescope, he spies Gwen Conliffe (Evelyn Ankers), who runs an antique shop. In an act of astonishingly stalker-like blatancy, Larry is quite brazen about his spying activities and uses it to chat up intelligent, no-nonsense Gwen, who is engaged to dapper Frank (Patrick Knowles). Larry’s not put off by this and continues to pursue Gwen, becoming – in my view - a first class pest in the process.

This is Universal films’ Wales, of course – why a Welsh location was decided on, I don’t know; there’s not a single remotely authentic accent to be heard. But who cares? My sneering attitude does ‘The Wolf Man’ a disservice. This would be Universal’s last A-list chiller. I always think the 1930s were the time of the horror film; in the 1940s (due to changing styles and budgetary considerations), they became monster movies; child-friendly creature-features that are utterly brilliant, but not quite the carefully constructed, intricate exercises in horror from the previous decade. ‘The Wolf Man’ contains a little from both worlds, but for all the light of the full moon, I cannot find the titular creature frightening, unlike his stablemates Frankenstein’s Monster and Dracula.

Despite Lon’s best efforts and some gruelling transformation scenes, the wolf man remains a lumbering, furry Airdale on two hind quarters. The scary qualities this film possesses are in the legends around the shaggy old snarler. Classic Universal’s best autumnal woodlands and sinister town square, pumped full of dry-ice fog and smoke, magnificent Maria Ouspenskaya as Maleva, the Gypsy Fortune Teller: smaller than anyone, yet the most authoritative. Also, Bela Lugosi in a criminally small role as gypsy Bela, with his own tragic story to tell (Lugosi makes a big impression in what is little more than a cameo). Frank Bellamy plays his usual solid slab of unmemorable beefcake decency, in the character of Colonel Paul.

There’s an incongruity – Bela becomes a werewolf, but when we see his alter-ego, it’s an actual real wolf. When Larry, who is inevitably bitten and receives the curse, he sprouts fur and fangs (and the cutest Hobbit-feet and button snout) but retains his human form.

As the net closes in on Talbot, his cheery demeanour slowly becomes enshrouded in uncertainty and furtive misery, which he retains through several sequels. Lon’s acting attracts much comment, some favourable and some unfair comparing with the very different styles of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi and others; but he never fails to invest his all into Talbot, his ‘baby’, a finely nuanced, progressive character about which he remained justifiably proud.

This low-budget project features Brianne Davis as feisty Jill, who gives her obnoxious lawyer short shrift when he attempts to patronise her when revealing the contents of his recently deceased aunt’s will. Jill is blind and is still coming to terms with people’s reactions to her. A possible stroke of good fortune comes about when it is revealed her estranged aunt has left her home – a spooky old mansion.

I mention the low-budget production values because this can put some viewers off. I bore people rigid by saying that independent films are only constrained by their lack of finance, and better that than to have the project diluted by the creativity-sapping, restraint-soaked wishes of more mainstream organisations. And yet it is true. If you want spectacular stunts and humanity-stripping CGI, this won’t be for you.

If you wish to look beyond superfluous production gimmickry, there is much to enjoy here. Writer/director David Sapp makes the most of his locations and particularly the Manor itself. The three main players Davis, Ken Luckey and Christine Woods (as Jill’s two good friends Rob and Erika) are terrific naturalistic and unaffected performers. Above all, their friendship is real and we can relate to them as people. When Jill starts seeing apparitions, she optimistically believes her eyesight may be returning.

The pace doesn’t pick up, but neither does it falter and there are a few decent scares. The most effective for me concerns Jill’s audio diaries – when playing back her latest entry, there are other noises in the background. Of course, people being people, an element of distrust grows amongst Rob and Erika, and for a time it is entirely possible (though unlikely) that one of them is deliberately trying to unnerve poor Jill.

The end is satisfying. And no, Jill does not magically recover her sight. She does, however, become more accustomed to her situation. Ultimately, ‘Marsten Manor’ is a decent chiller and well worth your time.

A young lady called Lovely (Lisa Marie Summerscales) is being chatted up at the seaside. She’s coy, all smiles. The next thing, we hear her disembodied voice on the phone crying, pleading for help. When her estranged husband Tom (Dean Cates) turns up to see her at a seedy hotel, he greets her desperate cries with all the sympathy of a sledgehammer. We soon see why. There’s a corpse in the room with her, covered in blood. Apparently, ‘this kind of thing’ has happened before.

Summerscales (who bears a resemblance to Billie Piper) is excellent in this, which is a role that really requires her to react to increasingly panicky situations. She’s never unbelievable or unsympathetic – even when the ‘corpse’ turns out to have secrets of his own.

Despite the leads’ unwillingness to call the police (although looking back, it’s just as well), I found myself fully invested in this. The performances are all strong, the atmosphere and music genuinely getting more and more unsettling. The direction is first rate – the hotel room, already seedy and unfriendly, takes on a more sinister tone when bathed only in the blinking static light from the television. The isolated nature of the location is powerfully utilised – poor Lovely’s predicament becomes increasingly hopeless.

There isn’t much gore, and very few special effects to speak of. None of this matters when a story is told this strongly – in fact, sparingly used as they are, the effects depicting Lovely’s deteriorating situation are all the more teeth-clenching. The setting, the 1950s, is effective and rids us of the convenience of mobile phones and the like.

Director, writer and ‘excited Cultist’ cast member Mickey Keating has provided a terrific debut with this slow burning, often deliberately muddy production (we don’t know much about the cultists and exactly what their ‘mission’ is, but that really doesn’t matter), which continues to restore my faith in modern horror somewhat. At times it seems as if events are passing too slowly, but there’s always a twist or a shock that makes sense of the decision. A dark, creepy, often claustrophobic story which remains compelling and unpredictable right until the end. Unnerving!

Cash-strapped Gwen (Alexandra Boylan) has no choice but to return to her isolated family home, but finds Kristi (Raquel Cantu) is living there and has no intention of leaving. We know Kristi is bad news when we see, in the introduction, her robbing a grocery store with her beau Van (Christopher Dempsey) and treating the event as a joke.

‘Home Sweet Home’ is an intriguing curiosity. For once, the attractive blond girl isn’t the victim but the frightening casual, sexually provocative home invader who seems always one step ahead. Aside from turning in a terrific performance, Boylan co-writes this, and Director John K.D. Graham gives it an at times unusual visual flair that belies the low budget.

As with many things in life, there are occasional gaps in logic. Just while the two aggressors do what they do is unclear, other than they’re crazy and they want to keep living in Gwen’s deceased parents’ house – and neither is the fact that, believing the two are outside in the grounds somewhere, Gwen decides to sleep in the un-curtained living room with the lights on (not that Gwen’s to know, but Kristi and Van appear to already be inside anyway).

Kristi is a wonderfully evil creation. She gets a sexual thrill out of her villainy but gives not a jot when Van is of no further use to her. The ending, slightly confused though it is, suggests that her allure is still not without its uses …

Despite a disastrous interview, young Lisa is delighted to gain employment as cleaner at the High Hopes Hospital. After meeting head Doctor Mixter (Jared Morgan), the chief (only?) cleaner Delaney (a curious Welsh/Russian hybrid played by Lee Bane), she is introduced to some of the patients, including one played by a terrifying Eileen Daly (who also sings the end theme). The first thing that strikes me about this Andrew Jones produced film is how empty the asylum is. Granted, Lisa is working the night-shift, but there is no background noise, nothing. Also, the location of ‘Amityville’ is something of a mystery. Lisa and the security guard are American, Delaney could be from any number of places, the young female reporter is Welsh and Mixter is decidedly English.

I’m a big fan of Andrew’s work, but assigning his low-budget, tightly shot styles to the Amityville series (this is the tenth film in the run) is a curious decision. Having said that, the sequels had become so far removed from the style of the original film by this time, perhaps Jones’ slow-burning style isn’t that jarring. The idea of High Hopes Hospital being built on the land where once stood the Amityville House is curious – Amityville was a residential area, and this institute would appear to be in the centre of it, not that we are afforded any establishing exterior shots, or barely any outside shots at all – which is why I am never convinced we are actually anywhere near America at any point (we aren’t – this was filmed in Wales).

UK born Sophia Del Pizzo plays American Lisa, her accent sounding perfectly convincing to my equally UK ear – although American viewers may disagree. As is often the case with Jones’ films, we care about his main character, so that when she begins to doubt her own sanity, we are wishing her well.

Sadly, this isn’t Jones’ finest hour. Possibly because the link to Amityville is so tenuous, possibly because the coldly-lit slow-burning style isn’t what we expect from an Amityville film, possibly because unfortunately it is a very plodding affair … all of these things together are never convincing and rarely frightening. Which is a shame, because the cast try hard, especially Pizzo and Daly, to inject some life into the proceedings.

“Get your hands up, you sick f***!”

“I see we’ve dispensed with the usual pleasantries.”

This is the nearest thing to a checklist of Jess Franco trademarks as I have ever seen. So – a wall-to-wall sitar-spangled jazzy soundtrack (heard before in ‘Vampyros Lesbos’), familiar faces (Soledad Miranda, Howard Vernon, Fred Williams, Ewa Strömberg, Paul Muller and Franco himself), plenty of eye-watering locations, lots of zoom-ins (which, after seeing a number of Franco films, I am learning to love rather than tolerate) and a hurried, garbled finale. The only two elements this lacks to allow for a Full House are stablemates sex and horror, which are there, but only very briefly.

Franco, as he often did, casts himself in a particularly thankless role. At one stage, his character Tino offers to buy Jane (Miranda) a drink. After she looks him up and down, she declares, “I hate Brilliantine,” and flounces off.

The story is tighter than on some other occasions and strays into thriller/espionage territory, with Miranda stealing every scene as Jane Morgan. There are some scenes set in London, which have charms of their own. Introduced by a sweeping panorama courtesy of an aged film-reel taken from elsewhere, the subsequent locations are as blatantly Spanish as you could wish.

With the notion that a mineral can turn humans into zombies, you may imagine such creatures play more of a role here. Never a fan of the walking dead, Franco uses the idea as a background piece, and only featuring any living cadaver twice throughout (in disappointingly subtle make-up). The rest of the time, we are concerned with Morgan and handsome Fred Forrester (Williams) and their various misdeeds and adventures.

A couple of unpleasant pack leaders are preparing a group of unpleasant Pathfinder cub scouts for a camping trip. Sam (Maurice Luijten) isn’t unpleasant, but he is late for their briefing, which earns him fifty press-ups whilst wearing his back-back. When they reach their intended camping site, the group run into two even more unpleasant youths with a grudge, racing around on a go-cart. This encourages the Pathfinders, who are also cowards, to camp somewhere else … deep in the woods.

The two arrogant leaders Chris (Titus De Voogdt) and Peter – or Baloo (Stef Aerts) – are joined by the only female of the group, chef Jasmijn (Evelien Bosmans). Jasmine and Chris go some way to curbing the Pathfinders’ bullying ways towards Sam, but the young outcast is more concerned with strange moving shapes in the trees and the legend of a local werewolf called Kai (Gill Eeckelaert).

The idea of Kai is a strong and appealing one. A feral child-creature living out in the woods. The more that is slowly revealed about him – and his father – slowly erodes the sinister mystique, which is a shame. And once we learn more about him, the horror aspects become less spectral, and more like solid slasher fare. And yet the twists and turns never stop until … well, even I won’t spoil that!

This Belgian horror is a terrific production; it contains effective characters, fine set-pieces and some nicely contrived death scenes. For all the killings brought about by a selection of cruel and carefully set traps throughout the forest, the real monster here for me is Baloo. Titus De Voogdt instils him with relentless, cowardly spite and bullying ways, we truly cannot wait for his come-uppance, which can never be horrible enough!

Jen Otto (Suzie Frances Garton) isn’t well, she isn’t happy and she isn’t finding much support from husband Paul (Lee Bane). Their son Gene (Flynn Allen) has been given a doll, a bug-eyed grinner called Robert, by recently sacked family cleaner Agatha (Judith Haley). Robert will be Gene’s best friend forever, promises Agatha. This is writer/director/producer Andrew Jones’ first foray into Robert’s world – the doll is an enigma he would return to more than once.

From then on, strange and unaccountable things begin to happen in the family house. Naturally, poor Gene gets the blame for this, but he’s adamant the doll is responsible. If only mum and dad would pay a bit of attention to the evidence. When Jen’s painting is daubed with red paint, the doll’s shoes are covered with red. Wouldn’t there have been a few footprints? The situation is fairly unreal, but that doesn’t mean that a certain logic should be ignored.

Where the film scores though is in the characters – Jones always writes really well for his characters, and you feel especially for Jen’s plight: she is mentally fragile anyway, and the more outlandish things happen, the more likely it is to everyone else that it’s all in her mind. The doll, however, sits and leers through it all, as relationships reveal their strained nature and resentment bubbles to the surface as a result of Robert’s interference. It is pretty creepy stuff, but rather less so on the occasions when the prop is required to move.

I don’t often comment on other reviews but a lot of online viewers have been negative about this and I truly don’t know why. A horror story about a malevolent doll (based on a true story, apparently – according to IMDB, Robert Eugene Otto (Gene) was first given Robert the Doll in 1906, when he was just six years old, by an angry Bahamian servant with an interest in black magic and voodoo) can either make you laugh or scare you: either way, you’re going to be entertained. Perhaps the lack of humour, no knowing wink to the audience, aggravates the audience. Perhaps the leisurely pace of proceedings (a trait of Jones) is to blame. Surely people aren’t shallow enough to criticise a low-budget project for having a low budget? This isn’t a Hollywood blockbuster and has no intention of being. A pity that people can’t enjoy these films for what they, rather than when they’re not.

I enjoyed ‘Robert’, as I have enjoyed all of Andrew Jones’ output. The ending, open to interpretation, is particularly effective.