Director: Jeffery Scott Lando
Running Time: 88 mins
Certificate: 15
Release Date: March 12th, 2012
The Perkins family heads out to a small hamlet deep in the woods to spend Halloween and so the parent can discuss a possible big business opportunity. However Hollow Glen hides a secret – back in the dim and distant past a witch put a curse of the entire town in revenge for them burning her sickly child – an evil creature known as The Goblin will rise every Halloween and kill any infant in the vicinity, cutting a swath through anyone that has even the smallest whiff of little kid on them. And wouldn’t you know it, the Perkins don’t just have mom, dad and two teen daughters, but also a little baby that would make perfect goblin grub.
As you may have guessed, this is not the most sensible of movies, but it sets its stall out early on to try to be cheap and cheerful horror fun that will satisfy the undemanding and pass 90 minutes in silly, schlocky fashion. For the most part it does just that, but if even a tiny part of you demands entertainment that rises above bargain basement fun, you’re better off looking elsewhere.
From teens busily doing ridiculous things to the locals doing the US backwoods equivalent of warning people to keep off the moors, it’s very clichéd, incredibly silly and often verges on the amateurish, people but most of it is fairly fun. However, what’s important in this sort of straight-to-DVD fantasy horror schlock, is the quality of the bad guy and the disgustingness of the gore. On the blood and guts front, while it’s not a non-stop gore-fest, it certainly has its hack and slash gruesome moments. As for the bad guy, it’s a bit of a mixed bag, as it ranges from the rather creepy to the astonishingly dreadful, so that at some points it appears people are being attacked by a scarf or some video-game grade CGI, while at others the FX are extremely effective and the creature a pretty brutal baddie.
Overall Verdict: It ain’t great, but if you just want 90 undemanding minutes of people running around screaming while locals warns of bizarre curses and a seven foot goblin tries to hack a family to death, you should be satisfied.
Reviewer: Tim Isaac
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