Intensity 🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Directed by Damien LeVeck
I will give points to A Creature Was Stirring (2023) for trying to do something original. A were-porcupine (A Porcupinecanthrope?) is a new addition to the monster lexicon. It’s a parenting horror piece. Also, it is a home invasion of sorts. And a drug horror story. The problem is that in execution, it never finds its proper footing, and the narrative gets lost.
A Creature Was Stirring knew exactly where it wanted to go with its story, and it got there. However, in getting there, it obliterated the path making the stylistic choices and story structure into mismatched and fractured elements. Essentially this is a stage drama. It is Christmas, and a mother and daughter are stuck at home in a blizzard. They settle in for a lovely evening of binding restraints and experimental drugs to ward off the daughter’s mysterious affliction. When a pair of refugees from the storm sneak into their home, the interruption proves too much, triggering a series of unfortunate events.
The Cast:
- Chrissy Metz plays Faith, a nurse and the very protective mother of the house.
- Annalise Bass plays Charm, Faith’s daughter, who has been shut in at home while dealing with a strange mutation she can’t control.
- Scout Taylor-Compton plays Liz, a refugee from the storm who becomes concerned about the strange relationship between Faith and Charm. Liz is a devout woman, while Faith, ironically, is a woman of science and is most definitely not.
- Connor Paolo plays Kory, Liz’s little brother, who becomes enchanted by Charm (there’s that irony again) despite all the disturbing indications of both mother and daughter.
A Short Synopsis
We are introduced to Faith and Charm as Faith checks Charm’s temperature. Charm’s temperature falls outside of the desired 102-104.4 degree range, so Faith puts her pharmaceutical skills to work. She mixes up a batch of “holiday cheer,” a dubious mix of methadone and other bio-inhibitors to keep Charm’s less charming side from showing up. The family then prepares for the night. Charm consumes the concoction and dons boxing gear to protect her from what will inevitably be a rough evening. As Faith locks her daughter into her room for the night, a commotion is heard downstairs.
Faith grabs a baseball bat with nails in it. Clearly, she was ready for the event of intruders. Liz and Kory have somehow snuck into Faith’s house in the middle of a blizzard. Faith ambushes the couple, maiming Kory in the leg. The siblings desperately plead for mercy and shelter. Surprisingly, they receive it. Faith tends to Kory’s wounds and then reveals that she has a daughter. Hidden. Upstairs. Don’t go looking for her.
The wounded Kory cannot resist. He sneaks upstairs to Charm’s room and finds the lonely girl hiding in the shadows. She eagerly engages him, masking herself from view, but leading him along with suggestive conversation. Downstairs, Liz confronts Faith about the ethics of keeping her daughter locked upstairs as being Un Christian. Faith scoffs at this assessment, but her protestations suggest something sinister to Faith’s background. As the title suggests, while these characters are sizing each other up, something is stirring in the background. Something prickly and goopy. Drip. Drip.
When Charm’s temperature finally breaks, her monstrous aspect metamorphoses. She gets loose. The other creature emerges. Chaos erupts, and all four characters barrel toward a singularly bizarre conclusion.
Evaluation
On many levels, this is a mixed bag of quality.
The story feels familiar, like a fairy tale on narcotics. It’s a tale of an overprotective mother and her monstrous daughter. There’s a bit of Rapunzel by way of Baba Yaga here. Liz and Korey magically appear out of nowhere. They seem to be a bit more prescient than they should be given the situation. We are immediately made aware of Charm’s condition, that she has a beast within, and yet, there is still something stirring in the chimney, or in the garage, or under the stairs. There’s a strange side-commentary involving the DC superhero Green Lantern that I couldn’t wrap my brain around. Concepts of grief, addiction, shame, forgiveness, and freedom get spot-checked over the course of the film. As a matter of course, the plot lurches around quite a bit.
So, when the conclusion manages to pull all of these disparate elements together, you would think it would be hugely satisfying. Sadly, it isn’t. All of the subtexts: The porcupine stuff, the guilt, the pharmaceuticals, the odd behavior of the intruders, the imprisonment… they all get packaged up in the end.
It almost had its Sixth Sense moment.
The 1999 classic gracefully paced its film with subtle layers of tasty, if indistinct, bread crumbs. It unveiled the moment in a curtain pull that had the audience stunned. Instead, this movie felt like a moving van careening down a twisty mountain road and finally slamming hard on the breaks, sending everything spilling into the road in a pile.
Shine spotlight!
TA Daaaaaaa! Do you see? Did you get it? (sound of hubcap spinning loosely on the road)
Again, points for originality. Demerits for execution.
Production
Credit, where credit is due. The practical effects of the monster and the gore effects are very well done. I was first made aware of this movie when we interviewed the cinematographer, Alexander Chinnici, who was then working on V/H/S 99, and he informed us of the monster from A Creature Was Stirring. Chinnici said that it was the most original monster he had seen in many years, and he wasn’t wrong. It’s a really cool beastie.
Not only is the monster conceptually interesting, but it moves well, and it has a great transformation scene. You need to be patient, though. You won’t see a hide or prickly hair of it for the first half of the movie. There are also some terrific sequences of Charm lurching around her bedroom under a bedsheet, which are quite effective (You can see these in the trailer.) Fine work here by effects supervisor John Travisano and Trevor Thompson’s makeup team.
Chinnici’s color scheme is pushed to the extremes. Heavy primary color combinations push the surreal aspect of the movie. It uses a Dario Argento palette. This palette plays to the fairy tale-like feel of the film. Having this at Christmas time with the Christmas tree light lends some credence to this look, but the look goes full dreamscape. Not every room has a Christmas tree. The dream aspect goes back to LeVeck’s conclusion to the film, and you question how much of the plot is real.
Conclusion
This is tough. I appreciate a lot of what was done here. Chrissy Metz (This is Us) is a real talent. She deserves as many shots as she can get as a leading lady. She’s impressive here. She pulls the full range from pathetic, to powerful and back again in this performance. Scout Taylor Compton is a savvy horror veteran and plays a fine agitator. The movie never bores. The central themes are laudable. Too many inconsistencies and poor editorial decisions really undo this story. The ending could have knocked it out of the park, but instead, we got a long foul ball. (Spiked baseball bat metaphor intended.)
You may have to give this a try for yourself, as I am on the fence for a recommendation here. A Creature Was Stirring is available for rent on Amazon Prime. This film is not rated, but would certainly be R for violence, gore, drug use, and some sexual aggression.