Castle Freak

For horror fans, the combination of a Lovecraft story. Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton in the cast, and Stuart Gordon in the director’s chair, should add up to a quality evening. Re-Animator and From Beyond features that convergence of elements and both are worth the watch (even if I’m in the minority that thinks From Beyond is better). But Castle Freak doesn’t have enough for those four elements to paper over the cracks. The movie can’t fill its own shoes. You can see it trying to be something, but it just doesn’t have enough to get over the finish line. It starts with the look of the movie itself. The visuals are muddy and rough, and the directing feels cheap and shoddy. Full Moon movies are not known for visual splendor, but you can see and feel Stuart Gordon’s direction being strangled against Full Moon’s low-budget aesthetics. The drab lighting, the muted colors, and the dull cinematography bleed dry whatever visual atmosphere Gordon was trying to convey. The script is another anchor on this movie. A fractured family (dad drove drunk, killed his son, and blinded his daughter) inherit an Italian castle. The previous owner tortured her son and kept him in the basement, but died before he could get free. He’s now twisted and feral and breaks out when the family comes to inventory the assets. Mayhem ensues. There’s supposed to be this dual theme of the family being torn apart by the grief and guilt of the accident, while being stalked by this monster, but it spends too much time tracking these two parallel courses. The movie doesn’t start to ramp up the tension until a good 70 minutes into a 90 minute movie. It’s trying for a slow burn, but when you have this deranged, inhuman beast as the antagonist, you gotta push the gas pedal. This ain’t Hitchcock, but it wants to be, which is just wrong. And as good as Combs and Crampton are, the daughter? WOOF. Stiff, wooden, and thoroughly unconvincing in any way. But I do have to give props where due. The monster and the gore are all well done. The monster, especially, is hideous but not in an unrealistic way (and they keep the close-up reveal until well into the movie, a smart move). Crampton and Combs have always had chemistry, and it’s no different here; their teetering marriage is believable and tragic. In the end, the movie is a perfect balance of strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately that means it can neither rise above, nor sink below, dead in the middle. It’s not bad, but it wants to be more and can’t … but what’s good is very good. So … yeah. Take that for what you will.