From Jeremy Kibler

An enticing premise and a solid group of young actors would seem like a surefire pairing to make All Fun and Games a piece of grisly-fun “Gateway Horror” in the bloodline of the Fear Street trilogy. What comes out to play instead is a slickly produced but annoyingly shrieky supernatural slasher flick with schlocky effects, too much telling over showing, and a lot of wasted potential.

Writing-directing team Eren Celeboglu and Ari Costa, along with co-writer J.J. Braider, seem to have watched a lot of horror movies, but a little more refinement for their feature debut would have been for the best. Off the top, All Fun and Games commits two tropes that need to just die: (a) the end of the story needlessly opening the film, and (b) a mumbly, “I know what you’re thinking…” voice-over narration that laboriously explains a familial dynamic. Without these tropes, the film might run three minutes shorter, and it’s already an overly trimmed-down 76 minutes.

Natalia Dyer plays Billie, who does basically feel like Nancy Wheeler from Stranger Things, only with darker, less flattering hair. She’s a teenager with hopes and dreams of getting out of Salem and moving to New York with her jock boyfriend Pete (Kolton Stewart). Her brothers, troubled Marcus (Asa Butterfield) and impressionable Jo (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth), come across an old diary and a bone-made knife cursed by a demon in an old cabin, and Jo brings home the knife. When the carved words on the knife are spoken and Jo is possessed, the demon then jumps into Marcus, turning him into a vessel who carries out a series of twisted children’s games (Hangman, Hide and Seek, and Red Rover) with fatal results. 

It’s more frustrating that there are actually glimmers of a much better film on the surface of All Fun and Games instead of it just being outright terrible and forgetting about it. A pall of doom over these characters is undeniable, although there should be more rooting interest in these contentious siblings and their fates. They’re adequately drawn, but Laurel Marsden, as Billie’s lesbian best friend Sophie, stands out the most once again in another mediocre horror movie that isn’t The Pope’s Exorcist.

A gnarly, mean-spirited kill in a bale of hay is most memorable, but the demon’s use of games doesn’t get nearly enough mileage as it should. Even though the story is set in the here and now, there is a refreshing timelessness, where cell phones are done away with real quick. Both Billie and Marcus gets theirs taken away early on by Mom (Annabeth Gish, in a thankless role), who’s off to work at the hospital. For every cool moment, atmospheric shot, or interesting idea, All Fun and Games takes about two steps back, somehow squandering most of its exciting possibilities for a scary campfire tale with this thin, undercooked first draft. 

Rating: 2/5

All Fun and Games is currently available on VOD platforms.

Follow Jeremy at @JKiblerFilm