2023 must have been a nice year to be gifted with so much holiday horror naughtiness; it was only last month that saw Tyler MacIntyre fuse It’s a Wonderful Life with some slasher stabbing. With his sophomore feature, director Damien LeVeck brings some claustrophobic monster terror to the season, even if A Creature Was Stirring often works better as a character piece and as indie ambition than as psychological or creature horror.
As a blizzard rages for days, single mother Faith (Chrissy Metz) cares for her feverish daughter Charm (Annalise Basso): regular temperature readings, mysterious experimental pills, a locked bedroom door, just the usual home remedies. The intrigue of A Creature Was Stirring’s first act and its tense off-kilter family relationship is the film in its best form, especially thanks to Metz’ naturalistic conviction. LeVeck gradually teases out the looming danger that Faith is so committed to containing, because if her daughter’s temperature falls too low, convulsions…and much worse consequences unfold. It’s in this precarious homelife that siblings Kory (Connor Paolo) and Liz (Scout Taylor-Compton) stumble into, breaking into the house to allegedly escape the raging storm but instead finding themselves in the company of a monster and a mom with one mean spiked baseball bat.
Isolating snow, a weird family, home invaders, and spiny beast lurking should be a recipe for interesting horror scenarios, and on some fronts, A Creature Was Stirring succeeds. Its strengths hinge entirely on the cast, teasing out themes of religious belief, addiction, and warped family ties as the fanatical Liz becomes convinced she can help Faith’s troubled child in ways that nursing and home medicine can’t. The interplay between siblings and family, parent and daughter, determined mother and trapped drifters imbue the story with surprising dramatic weight that one might not expect from Christmastime creature terror.
But perhaps that narrative heft becomes a necessity when that “Christmastime creature terror” is so lacking. To the film’s credit, the practical monster effects are an admirable effort, and in moments when the lighting, sets, and shadows are right, the confined eeriness is effective. A sequence in a suffocating snow tunnel lit by electric candy cane nicely fuses holiday and horror. Yet the film’s budget limitations can’t be overcome; an oversized porcupine-type beast rolling and flipping around its prey seems to aim for old-school schlock or Creepshow vibes, but just comes across as laughable more often than not. Actually, the lighting achieves that ‘80s schlock atmosphere more than the creature did; bathed in vivid red, green, and blues of the season, the mood recalled other throwback contemporaries like Joe Begos’ Christmas Bloody Christmas, sharing that film’s flair for turning holiday aesthetic into stylistic overload.
While smartly relying more on its performance and chemistry than creature carnage or gore (although what’s here is suitably grisly), A Creature Was Stirring can’t overcome the limitations that constantly undercut the promise of its title. Director Damien LeVeck wrings unexpectedly complex conflict from a holiday monster flick, but as a holiday monster flick, this was a disappointment.
Photo courtesy of Well Go USA Entertainment
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