‘A Creature Was Stirring’ Review: A Chaotic, Overstuffed Holiday Horror
I can usually tell if I’m going to like a film pretty early on. But A Creature Was Stirring threw me for a loop. The first 30 minutes of the picture aren’t bad at all. I initially thought the flick was going to be a moderate success. The setup of a home invasion taking place during the holiday season is a great jumping-off point. Chrissy Metz turns in a layered performance with plenty of nuance. Plus, there are some solid jump scares early on. However, the further I got into the film, the less I found myself enjoying it. And by the end, I came away feeling cheated and frustrated. The narrative goes completely off the rails near the midway point. And the dreadful twist ending only infuriated me further.
A Creature Was Stirring follows Faith (Chrissy Metz), a hardworking nurse who lives in a sizable estate with her daughter, Charm (Annalise Basso). Faith is in recovery but harbors dark secrets from her troubled past. During a massive storm, a brother and sister (Connor Paolo and Scout Taylor-Compton) let themselves into Charm and Faith’s home to take shelter from the inclement weather. However, the uninvited guests get more than they bargained for when they discover that Charm has some alarming tendencies that put their lives in serious danger.
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Although the movie doesn’t work as a whole, some pieces function quite effectively. Chrissy Metz is great in her turn as Faith. There’s a profound darkness to her character that she keeps under wraps. The glimpses of that inner turmoil that we see early on feel authentic and add nuance to the proceedings. Metz is convincing as a mother who believes she is doing what’s necessary to keep her daughter out of harm’s way. Additionally, her relationship with addiction reads as rather authentic.
Also impressive is the way director Damien LeVeck succeeds at building tension early on. The first 30 minutes serve up a couple of good scares and make the most of the inherent claustrophobia associated with the core cast being trapped indoors during a blizzard. Unfortunately, the narrative becomes tragically overcomplicated in the second and third acts. More complexities are added in with each passing minute, making the proceedings feel muddled and unfocused.
Simply confining the uninvited guests to the domicile and pitting them against the central evil at play would have been plenty to sustain the narrative. But instead, the story pivots to Kory and Liz trying to liberate Charm from her overprotective mother, which causes the proceedings to lose focus. There’s a lack of restraint at play that eventually serves as this picture’s undoing.
I will concede that there is a compelling message about the strangle-hold addiction can take on a person at the heart of the story. But too much of the narrative is tailored to illustrating that conceit and a variety of other tangents. Essentially, the storyline becomes less coherent and less entertaining with time as it goes off in various directions. It’s like screenwriter Shannon Wells wants to too much and the proceedings eventually just fall apart.
What irks me the most is the way the story concludes with a ‘gotcha’ twist that creates a series of plot holes and adds nothing to the narrative. Moreover, this type of twist has been done far more effectively by other recent films
If A Creature Was Stirring had stripped back all the added complications and gone for a more streamlined narrative, I think this film could have worked rather well. The cast is talented and the seasonal atmosphere is often inviting. But the narrative becomes far too ambitious in the back half and loses sight of what makes the opening act effective. What we are left with is unbridled chaos and a bad case of whiplash from a narrative that tries to do too much at once.
If you are interested in checking A Creature Was Stirring out, it’s available now on digital.
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‘A Creature Was Stirring’
Summary
This holiday horror film tries to do too much and devolves into a chaotic nightmare.
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