Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Damien LeVeck
Starring: Chrissy Metz, Annalise Basso, Scout Taylor-Compton, Connor Paolo
When it comes to horror movies, Christmas is the new Halloween. We now
get more horror movies set during Christmas than during Samhain. 2023's
batch includes the likes of
It's a Wonderful Knife,
Nightmare on 34th Street,
The Sacrifice Game,
There's Something in the Barn
and director Damien LeVeck's A Creature Was Stirring.
You have to wonder if A Creature Was Stirring really began life as a Christmas movie, as aside from its title
there's practically no reference to the holidays. When a vintage record
player kicks into action it plays a version of Greensleeves rather than
some expected Christmas classic. I often wonder if most Christian rock
bands began life as regular rock outfits and made the switch in a
desperate attempt to find an audience.
A Creature Was Stirring gives me similar feelings.
The film is set during a blizzard (hey, I guess snow is Christmassy,
right?), in the middle of which we find Faith (Chrissy Metz) and
her teenage daughter Charm (Annalise Basso) stuck in their home.
Charm has a rather curious condition. If her temperature rises above or
drops below a specific window she turns into something resembling a
cross between a giant porcupine and Ryuk from
Death Note. Faith has spent her life trying to find a cure for her daughter's
ailment, but for now she has to keep her largely confined to her bedroom
behind a fortified steel door.
A Creature Was Stirring also falls into that horror
sub-genre involving home invaders who discover the home they've invaded
houses a serious threat. The invaders here are Liz (Scout Taylor-Compton) and her brother Kory (Connor Paolo). When Faith discovers the
siblings she takes down Kory by planting a baseball bat embedded with
sharp nails in his leg. Liz insists that they mean no harm, that they
simply desperately need shelter. Faith is struck by guilt and
allows the pair to stay in her home.
It's at this point that the narrative becomes increasingly confusing,
to the point that A Creature Was Stirring is a maddening
watch. Liz and Kory are revealed to be Christian missionaries (the
former has a massive tattoo of the crucifixion on her back, which would
have made for a great visual reveal if their identity hadn't already
been established through dialogue), which seems like a refreshing
deviation from the usual Satanic villains of such movies. But the film
doesn't do anything with this revelation, and it only adds to the
confusion. Rather than mouth-foaming fundamentalists, Liz and Kory come
off as the sort of well-meaning do-gooder types that knock on your door
to save your soul and sell you a magazine subscription. They seem to
pose no threat to Faith and Charm, so why did they break into their home
rather than just using the doorbell and asking if they could come in out
of the storm?
The confusion piles on as the story progresses, leaving us asking
questions when we should be invested in the drama. Why does Charm turn
into a porcupine of all things? There's a flashback to a traumatic
childhood experience in a zoo's porcupine enclosure, and Faith gives
some half-assed theory about Charm being so mentally scarred that her
mind is forcing her to turn into what she fears most. Even if you buy
that, it doesn't explain how there's another giant human/porcupine
hybrid and a few miniature ones also scuttling about the house.
We eventually get an explanation but it comes in the form of a late
twist that is so insulting to the audience's intelligence that you best
not have any physical objects to hand, lest you hurl them at your screen
in anger. It's a twist that makes no sense given what we've witnessed
play out, and it forces us to question why we were given certain
perspectives that are now rendered nonsensical.
There are several other issues that dog
A Creature Was Stirring, such as LeVeck's inability to coherently convey the geography of the
home in which his film takes place; a headache inducing neon colour
scheme (an element it shares with another recent Christmas horror, Joe
Begos'
Christmas Bloody Christmas); and some woefully misguided attempts at comedy (a dream sequence
involving Kory dressed as comic book hero Green Lantern is baffling as
to why it's in the movie and also how LeVeck got the rights to use the
character). Its biggest problem is that it never establishes who we're
supposed to be rooting for here. None of the characters are likeable,
and the movie keeps shifting its perspective: is the movie about Faith
protecting her daughter from home invaders, or the home invaders'
attempt to survive the night? A Creature Was Stirring has
a promising setup that is completely wasted in an attempt to outwit the
audience. In the pantheon of Christmas horrors, it's a stocking with
nothing but a lump of coal inside.
