Truly Dreadful Film

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

I don't know if anything below will count as a spoiler, but just to be safe, SPOILER ALERT???. I didn't expect much from this film but I've been curious about it for a while. I felt that the actions, even of the little boys, were so preposterously stupid in every way that I was distracted by how frustrated I was (there is NO WAY that kid, that age, would not be able to tell that people directly in front of him were begin killed in real life). Maybe I'm biased but I also felt that the overall mood of the movie was cheapened by the repetitive references to sin/religion, regardless of the title. It definitely reeked of skewed, awkward political commentary. I was also rubbed in the wrong direction, further, by the weird incestuous stuff that kept popping up as well as the scene with the sister fraternizing with the murderer right in front of the boy. No way in hell would an older sibling do that in front of their kid brother if we are assuming we're talking about a sane, healthy relationship. Furthermore, the repetitive theme of the main character's skewed perception of reality was way, way too twacked out, even for a kid that young in a way that was completely unbelievable unless they had written him to have some type of mental issue. I absolutely love cheese, stupidity, preposterousness, but this one fell so short I couldn't enjoy it at all and felt mad about wasting my time when it was over.

Thinking he's following a real-life version of a favorite video game character, a young boy unwittingly aids a serial killer along a rampage of carnage on Halloween night, and when it finally dawns on him about his actions, tries to help his parents stop the madman.This ended up being quite an enjoyable if really flawed effort. Most of this is due to the absolutely original notion of the connection between the killer and the game, which is quite a coincidence but really allows for a demented atmosphere throughout as there's the whole issue of a child being fascinated with violence and death and actively encouraging it to happen, granted unwittingly but still plays an active part in the process. By making it so that he's so unable to realize the difference between real-life and fantasy allows this to really get dark with its humor by including the rampage home from the supermarket where they basically run wild through the town knocking off people left and right in the shopping as he joyfully cries out alongside the carnage which is simply fun all around simply by his presence there gleefully doing his thing during the whole sequence as he thinks it to be a game they're playing. That as well gives the scenes in the house prior to the rampage a sense of eeriness as the killer interacts with the family who are unaware of the true nature of their companion as the cold, silent stare out from underneath the unimaginably creepy devil mask works wonders in generating a creepy villain and aides this as well during the other scenes out among the town as the rampage really picks up during the middle segments of the film. While this tries to give off a comedic vibe from these efforts, it's really not all that funny as the entire joke, that he can't distinguish fantasy from reality because of the way the character's dressed, is pretty lame for a running joke to go through an entire film and doesn't really have much else in the way of jokes to make it work. It's all based on his inability to see that the figure is a killer as everyone else plays along for no reason and this ends up giving the film a really off vibe during the first hour. Thankfully, once the ruse is found out that's dropped in favor of a series effort to stop the madman which is far more interesting with the twist involving the identity switch, the race to stop him from getting back to the kid and the rampage at the party offering some addition fun due to the more serious tone offered. Overall, it's quite a fun ride but it's most certainly not as funny as people say it is, leading to it's only real flaw.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language, drug use and constant scenes of children-in-peril.

Writer/director Jeff Lieberman gives us some horror with more than a fair share of humor. Dougie(Alexander Brickel) is a 9-year-old boy obsessed with his favorite video hero game Satan's Little Helper and is exited about Halloween. His sister Jenna(Katheryn Winnick)is coming home to keep the tradition of 'trick-or-treating' with her little brother. Dougie is not impressed and a bit jealous that Jenna brought her new boyfriend Alex(Stephen Graham)with her. Dougie happens to meet a cool dressed guy and is sure that he is the "real" Satan. Immediately he begs to be his assistant. This little demon wants nothing more than to spook his friends and have Satan take them to hell. Oh yes, and to git rid of Alex. Satan goes about not saying a word, but his actions speak for him. Everyone is unaware that the man behind the mask is actually an escaped serial killer and he runs up a nice body count with ease. For working with a limited budget this film is surprisingly creepy and has decent special effects.

Dougie, a less then mentally stable 9 year old, is heavily into a video game entitled 'Satan's Little Helper', so much so that when he spies a murderer in a devil costume he hardly bats an eye before asking to be his minion and asking if his new 'friend' can kill his sister's new boyfriend (Dougie wants to marry his sister himself, but that's neither here nor there). Things soon spiral horribly out of control, as they are apt to do in these scenarios.I haven't been too kind to ol' Jeff Lieberman in the past, I haven't enjoyed his films since "Blue Sunshine" & have on one occasion even drew the ire of the man himself who wrote to me on here. But with that said, I have to give kudos to a film when I feel that it warrants them and I did find this film does just that. Yes it's silly, but it's still likable in it's own demented way (until it starts to lose steam a tad in the final act) Joshua Annex steals the movie as the main baddie not even having to say a word, the rest of the cast, including a bizarre acting turn by Amanda Plummer, fare not so well (but again that's not a real slight against the film, as that's a small part of the charm) All in all it's a perfectly capable small black comedic horror film.Eye Candy: Melisa McGregor shows T&A My Grade: C+ Where I saw it: Netflix online via xbox 360