The differences between Damien LeVeck’s sophomore effort A Creature Was Stirring and his feature debut The Cleansing Hour are staggering. His instincts are ironclad in the cleanly polished and despicable exorcism thriller that stands as one of Shudder’s best original releases in 2020. Unfortunately, A Creature Was Stirring doesn’t replicate the same accomplished approach as an ambitious yet scattershot blast of subgenres. Psychological chills, creature thrills, and family dysfunction become this unfocused commentary on the looming specter of addiction. LeVeck takes risk after risk — the filmmaker’s fearlessness should not be ignored — but there’s a befuddling all-over-the-place-ness that does not play into the film’s favor.
Chrissy Metz (of This Is Us fame) stars as the seemingly single mother Faith, who we meet barricaded inside with her daughter Charm (Annalise Basso) during a lethal blizzard. Now, Charm suffers from some affliction that Faith uses her nursing background to understand — Faith’s bedroom serves as a laboratory with scribbled notes about chemical formulas and bubbling beakers. Faith is also plagued by a darkness brought upon by her reckless, drug-addled past, which she keeps trapped inside a briefcase away from her family-focused new self. It’s bitterly cold outside, Charm’s condition begins acting up, and Faith’s demons won’t let anyone rest — then, to make matters worse, religious travelers played by Scout Taylor-Compton and Connor Paolo smash their way inside.
A lot is happening in A Creature Was Stirring, which is aesthetically themed to the yuletide season for added set decorations. Writer Shannon Wells mocks a holiday that preaches “goodwill towards men” because Faith and Charm’s scenario could be the opposite. Wells’ story asks: is Faith keeping Charm imprisoned against her will? That’s what Taylor-Compton and Paolo’s trespassers aim to uncover and what we, the audience, are meant to decipher. It’s a perplexing puzzle of teenage angst and nondescript medication regimens intended to keep us on edge, but LeVeck sometimes struggles to sustain the mystery’s suspense. With so many peripheral components, it’s easy for distractions to tear us away from the conflict at large.
LeVeck and his production designers do their best to delight audiences with Christmastime accents — a decorative candy cane light becomes a character’s flashlight, for example — but colorful LED glows aren’t enough to mask rougher technical aspects. Cinematography captures a suburban residence with a frigid flatness, and there’s a fakeness to components like arts and crafts snow or prop weapons that cheapens visuals. LeVeck struggles to navigate obvious low-budget restraints with the chops to make these blemishes matter less, and these instances make it harder for audiences to find themselves transported into Faith’s overwhelming nightmare.
The biggest distraction in A Creature Was Stirring is the creature itself, a prickly porcupine of a reaper connected to Faith’s poisonous past. Special effects commit to prosthetics and a full suit, which exudes the presence of ’80s schlock, but creature actor George Schichtle’s costume has severe limitations. Wells and LaVeck use the shadow-lurking Sonic to represent Faith’s looming addiction and the evil she manifests, but Wells’ central story drive becomes muddled at full steam as subplots fight for spotlight treatment. Between Faith’s flashbacks, Charm’s current condition, the additional drifters (yadda yadda), the throughline between strangers tangles like strands of tree lights in storage bins. There’s a throwback appeal to the gnarly, immobile creature standing on two legs and a cute creepiness to its rolling second form, yet the beast’s inclusion hits with the force of a loosely packed snowball otherwise.
Performances are stunted by the overall lackluster of A Creature Was Stirring. Metz and Basso have their moments as a mother and daughter at odds but also can sell contempt like it’s factory manufactured. Taylor-Compton and Paolo are charismatic as pleading newcomers but underwhelming as investigators who are convinced Charm is being held against her will. Not to be too harsh, but scenes can feel like the surface-value Hallmark equivalent of Christmas Horror, more melodramatic than convincing. I’ve seen everyone here act their butts off in other projects, but something about LaVeck’s direction diminishes the value of actors on screen.
A Creature Was Stirring is an obscure rendition of Christmas Horror that barely even calls upon the holiday beyond dreadful winter weather storms. LaVeck’s direction lacks precision, and Wells’ screenplay swings too hard without consistency. Any mind-melting conclusion doesn’t shatter perceptions as spectacularly as it should, and that’s because it’s just one more zag after countless zigs lose their emphasis. You can’t fault a film for trying, and I’d still rather watch fifty more A Creature Was Stirring-type titles with massive ambitions, but ideas on paper don’t outweigh final execution. There’s just too much stirring in this medi-ho-ho-ho-cre holiday thriller.
A Creature Was Stirring hits theaters December 8 and VOD outlets December 12.
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