Movie Review: Where the Scary Things Are

credit: Where the Scary Things Are

To hear this movie compared with Goonies and a couple of other kid-driven features almost feels like an insult since while there is promise to this plot, the kids in this movie are anything but lovable, and in fact, aren’t even likable since they all come off as a bunch of hoodlums that live for the chance to inflict pain or cause mischief for likes. When they decide to hang around an amusement park, they end up finding a humanoid mutant of some sort that they manage to chain to a wall. From that point, they start having fun with the creature by beating it, feeding it, and filming it for likes on social media. The horrible nature of these kids is shown throughout the movie as they’re given an assignment by their teacher to create their own urban legend. Of course, with a monster of their own chained to the wall, they end up upping the stakes by trying to convince people that the creature is real. Initially, people are impressed by what they see since the creature is convincing and it is quite disgusting, which ups the shock value of the kids’ posts. But after a while, the kids begin to up things yet again and start feeding the creature living beings, which sparks new comments that are not all positive but get the kids to keep pushing forward. 

credit: Where the Scary Things Are

It needs to be said again; the kids just aren’t likable. 

There’s little to nothing to like about these characters since they’re all kind of horrible or simply too weak in their own ways. Ayla, the supposed leader of this group, or at least the most influential, is a little too over the top since she comes off as an extremely irritable individual who simply likes to hurt people, perhaps because her home life isn’t that great or for some other reason. Maybe she’s simply aggressive by nature, but the montage scenes in which she’s apparently being given some leeway to appear at least a little innocent are less than convincing. The rest of the group isn’t any better since they end up being every bit as guilty as Ayla is, especially since they never try to stop her in a meaningful way. If anything, the group simply makes things worse by sacrificing one of their fellow students and eventually their own teacher.  

The title is kind of misleading. 

It did feel as though this movie was going to feature more than one creature that might have troubled the kids and made life difficult, but with the creature they dub Crockamoley the only thing that shows up, it leaves the audience wanting to see more. Trying to get into this movie is a little tough simply because it begs the audience to simply accept what they’re being given when it really doesn’t feel like they’re being given more than a simple story that could have been part of an anthology series. In fact, this story might have gone off better if it had been a part of an anthology since the pacing and the overall effect that it gives is that of something that overstayed its welcome by at least thirty to forty minutes. 

It’s easy to root for the deaths in this movie. 

That sounds a little wrong to say, but the truth is that rooting for the deaths of the characters in this story feels practical because, to tell the truth, they are that horrible. The fact that a group of kids could have so little regard for other human beings that they would send them as lambs to the slaughter makes it very easy to look at these kids and think that they earned the deaths they received, especially since the overall lack of compassion for their own fellow student means that there is something insanely wrong with them. One could say that it’s their parents’ fault since from the few moments in which the kids are seen interacting with their parents, it’s apparent that there isn’t a great relationship to build upon. But otherwise, it’s simply because the kids are just that ridiculously addicted to the likes they receive on their social media accounts. 

Overall, it had promise, but the execution was kind of poor. 

If this script had been given a once-over and perhaps even had more of a budget for other monsters, it might have been a success. But as it stands, this movie was little more than a jumped-up short story that lasted a bit too long and featured a cast that wasn’t easy to like in the slightest. It’s not the worst horror movie ever made, but comparing it to the Goonies in any way feels like a massive insult.