Movie Breakdown: Come Play (Noah)
Pre-Screening Stance:
Come Play looks a little like The Babadook but instead of a children’s book, there’s the looming evil of technology. It also looks pretty dumb.
Post-Screening Ramble:
A few weeks after watching Come Play – the Gillian Jacobs / Jon Gallagher / kid-actor starring horror film about a monster named, sigh, Larry who lives in phones – the only descriptor I can really muster is “sure.” Newcomer Azhy Robertson plays Jacob, an autistic kid with slightly deadbeat parents (Gillian Jacobs and Jon Gallagher), who discovers a kid’s book in his phone about a scary, lonely monster named Larry. Yes, the bad guy in this film is Scary Larry. Jacob has already got enough challenges – the kids at school pick on him, his old friends have turned their backs on him, his parent’s relationship is on the skids – and when Larry suddenly starts knocking shit off shelves and throwing things at other children, he has to convince his parents that he’s not just a troublemaker.
It isn’t a terrible film. I’ll say that. Larry is, well, he is scary – brooding and scaly and skinny like a cross between the Slender Man and the Abomination – and the film uses him to solid affect. The main problem is the thinness of the characters. It seems like you’re supposed to root for Gillian Jacobs since she (and Jon Gallagher) are kind of crappy people. And that’s about all they get in terms of character development. They love their kid, but they’re bad at parenting (and being human beings in all frankness), and trying to convince an audience to give a shit when Scary Larry is lifting them in the air and throwing them across rooms doesn’t make for a riveting film. Beyond that, there’s no real rules to Scary Larry. He lives in the phone (and the television, and the darkness, and the lights and electricity) and he can’t really do anything until he’s summoned by the reading of the digital children’s book, but also, he can and he does. And more often than not with the deadbeat ‘rents and the generic kid and the storyline that half-heartedly lopes along, I couldn’t care to piece it all together.
Sure, it ate up two hours of my life without leaving any lasting scars, but nowadays, a film that left a mark is all I want.
One Last Thought:
It feels like Gillian Jacobs and Jon Gallagher were rising through the ranks and then they ended up in … this film? Hollywood, you fickle monster you. You fickle Scary Larry you.
