Review | Come Play movie review: in predictable horror fable, excessive smartphone use spawns a monster
- Parents fight to save their autistic son when a mysterious creature uses his electronic devices to break into our world in this disappointing chiller
- Derivative and unimaginative, the film tries to emulate the success of similar horror films like Poltergeist and It, but falls well short
2/5 stars
Most of us spend too much time staring at our screens, and writer-director Jacob Chase’s horror film takes the literal manifestation of excessive screen use as its bogeyman. Come Play, expanded from his 2017 short Larry, sees a young autistic boy and his family stalked by a demon through their mobile devices. Chase manages to cook up a few decent scares along the way, but this is very familiar territory.
Oliver (Azhy Robertson) is unable to speak because of his condition, and communicates using an app on his phone. He is bullied frequently at school, and his parents (Gillian Jacobs and John Gallagher Jnr) are on the verge of separating.
One night, an illustrated story called “Misunderstood Monsters” appears on Oliver’s phone, featuring a lonely creature named Larry, who is seeking a friend. As Oliver reads, he begins to see the gangly figure in every shadow of his room, and is soon convinced that Larry is frighteningly real.
At every turn, Come Play feels wildly derivative, repeatedly evoking the past successes of more accomplished horror films. Poltergeist and It are obvious forebears, but the most obvious influence is Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook , in which the demonic antagonist from a creepy children’s book also traumatises a troubled boy and his put-upon mother.
It’s a comparison that does Chase’s film no favours, as Come Play lacks any of that film’s tactile scares or atmospheric terror. It does score a couple of passable spooky sequences, which might be sufficient to satisfy those looking for a swift, relatively painless jolt of Halloween heebie-jeebies. Anything more substantial is undercut by the film’s conflicted central thesis.
Spending our lives glued to our screens, rather than interacting with each other face-to-face, is bad. Larry, as his story tells us, was born out of loneliness. Screen use erodes our communication skills, leaving less able people like Oliver stranded, and can also make us vulnerable to online predators.
On the flip side, the film also concedes that the same devices are an indispensable benefit to our lives, giving Oliver a voice through which to express himself. They connect us with absent friends and family, and also, specifically, can be used to detect nasty monsters that might be hiding under the bed. The film even extols the healing powers of SpongeBob SquarePants.
Perhaps, in this case, it would be better to avert our gaze altogether.
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