From Jeremy Kibler

Somewhere in the extended climax of A Creature Was Stirring, a porcupine monster does a front flip cannon ball on top of their human victim. Yes, you read that correctly. It’s one of the more amusing creative swings in a horror film that is otherwise deadly serious with the exception of some darkly funny snark. Part addiction allegory, part mother-daughter drama, and part literal monster movie, the film never quite coalesces as a whole, but at least it offers a committed Chrissy Metz (Kate on TV’s This Is Us) the opportunity to lead a genre film.

Metz stars as Faith, a nurse and recovering heroin addict who takes care of her teenage daughter Charm (Annalise Basso), an aspiring graphic novelist, in their Louisville home. It’s a blizzard outside, so they aren’t going anywhere. Charm may or may not be running a really high fever, as Faith has her daughter on a strict regimen of experimental drugs and takes her temperature rectally before and after taking an ice bath. Then Faith locks Charm up in her bedroom like a prisoner, while Charm puts on a soft protective helmet and speaks in a demonic voice. Thinking it’ll just be the two of them for the night, Faith incapacitates one of two masked intruders looking for shelter. They turn out to be a pair of siblings, the pious Liz (Scout Taylor-Compton) and not-so-pious Kory (Connor Paolo), who begin to sense there’s something wrong about this mother-daughter relationship. Is Charm being held against her will? Maybe. Maybe not. 

Director Damien LeVeck (The Cleansing Hour) and writer Shannon Wells have a wicked short film here with some extra padding. Considering this feature-length film shows its cards as early as the first three minutes with the shadowy reveal of a porcupine monster, there has to be a longer game to play. There is, in fact, and the final nail in the coffin is actually the wrap-up. In what was probably supposed to bring more cohesion and sense to the previous goings-on, a last-minute revelation feels even less cohesive and makes even less sense. It’s a total cheat, even as the film recaps itself to bring new context but negates everything that came before.

A Creature Was Stirring tries to be more, but in doing so, it’s actually less and very ham-fisted. Seemingly shot with a black light and so many Christmas-colored filters, the film alternates between looking moody and seasonally atmospheric, and distractingly garish, but that counts for visual interest when the story itself doesn’t come together. 

Metz is quite good here, willing to go to intensely dark places as a desperate mother with a painful past. LeVeck directs a creepy sequence where a character foolishly follows a voice with a decorative candy cane as a flashlight, crawling through a tunnel of snow outside the front door. During the climax, there’s also some disgustingly goopy practical effects, like an inner monster ripping through a human body. The final image, accompanied by a cover of Chrismas carol “What Child Is This?” by Katrina Cain, is even haunting, too, but it deserves to be attached to a film that’s more worthwhile the whole way through. It’s certainly better for a film to take chances, which A Creature Was Stirring does, however, this is a genre grab-bag that needed to rein itself in a bit.

Rating: 1.5/5

A Creature Was Stirring hit select theaters on December 8, 2023 and VOD on December 12, 2023.

Follow Jeremy