This is our second Stephen King adaptation this month for
Netflix and Kill. It’s one that kind of
flew under my radar and went straight to DVD a few years ago. It’s based on his short story, “Gramma” and
was produced by Jason (Paranormal Activity) Blum and McG.
Most of us have had to care for a sick and/or dying loved
one as they were slowly approaching the end of their life. I think we can all sympathize with the family
in this movie. They take Gramma out of
the nursing home in hopes she’ll die peacefully at home. The family has to force feed her, give Gramma
her shots, and hold her down when she has her fits. It’s especially hard on the children, but
then again, children sometimes are a lot more resilient than you’d expect. This aspect of the movie works. As a horror flick though, it ain’t much.
There wasn’t a whole lot to the short story, and the stuff
the filmmakers have added to pad out the narrative is muddled at best. Pacts with the devil, imaginary ghost
friends, mysterious deaths, hounds from Hell, and family curses are all thrown
into the mix in an effort to add some scares to the proceedings. It never really gels, but at least the performances
by Frances O’Connor and Dylan McDermott are solid.
Although none of the horror elements came together in any
kind of meaningful way, I didn’t hate it or anything. Well, until the end that is. That’s where the movie really shits the bed. (Just like Gramma, I suppose.) It’s almost borderline incomprehensible,
which is a shame because the opening act had a lot of promise.
Part of the fun of watching all of these Netflix movies this
October has been seeing various plot elements overlapping from film to film. Like The Devil’s Candy, it’s a
family-oriented horror flick. Like The
Devil’s Candy, the family stuff works better than the horror. Like The Devil’s Candy, it’s only 79 minutes
long, but it feels much longer. It’s
also similar to Late Phases as it’s about a guy dealing with a loved one as
they enter the last stages of their life.
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