Jacob Chase’s Come Play is a surprisingly good horror movie; ‘surprisingly’ because there’s a lot of really mediocre horror out there so movies that manage to work are worth drawing attention to.

What make it such a joy for me is that any movie that makes me feel something – as long as it isn’t ‘Meh’ or I get the impression that a director is being sadistic – is worth watching and there are some moments that will threaten to bring tears to your eyes. And sure, to an extent that’s manipulative, but that’s exactly what anything that moves you is doing, so I’m okay with it.

It isn’t perfect though – few movies are because there’s always something that could be done to make even the best movies just a little bit better, so that’s okay as well – mainly because what’s wrong with Oliver (Azhy Robertson) isn’t quite made clear. A child in his class says that he’s autistic, but his mother, Sarah (Gillian Jacobs) seems to imply at one point that his condition is due more to her actions, which is a bit of confusion that didn’t need to be there.

Another is ‘Larry’ – who so looks like something that Guillermo Del Toro might come up with that I was looking for his name to turn up in the credits somewhere (Interesting fact: The practical versions of Larry were made by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, which is pretty interesting in it’s own right) though more of the creature appeared to be CGI than a practical effect, which I think was a bit of a missed opportunity because he vaguely reminds me of Del Toro’s ‘The Pale Man’ from Pan’s Labyrinth.

While writing the description for the review I uploaded to my Youtube channel I noticed that Come Play is not only thematically similar to Child’s Play (1988), even the initials are the same though that isn’t to imply it’s a copy more than an interesting coincidence.