Now this is how you stretch a horror short into a full-length film!
Come Play, writer/director Jacob Chase’s expansion of his 2017 calling card, Larry, intelligently upscales its foundation’s technical prowess, slick effects and command of suspense to the big time in a way that suggests he’d been crafting features for years.
Like any respectable genre peer, its monster — a skeletal entity named Larry — is steeped in social commentary. Activated via a creepy Babadook-like e-book that inexplicably appears on the smartphone of lonely, autistic elementary schooler Oliver (Azhy Robertson, Marriage Story), Larry prompts viewers to contemplate humans’ screen addictions and the isolation such activity breeds.
The creature’s metaphorically rich predatory doings, accompanied by eerie, bone-cracking sound effects, make even more sense in the context of the pending divorce of Oliver’s parents, Sarah (Gillian Jacobs, I Used to Go Here) and Marty (John Gallagher Jr., 10 Cloverfield Lane), which renders their already secluded, nonverbal child even more susceptible to Larry’s “charms.”
Though the family’s sightings of Larry via screens — be it at home (especially the neat reveal of his origin story) or during Marty’s graveyard shifts as the attendant of a spookily underused parking lot — are consistently jarring, he’s not the brightest demon. Fairly easy to elude, yet also capable of inexplicable supernatural activity, he’s at best a fledgling menace, still learning his powers, and at worst, a victim of inconsistent screenwriting.
Regardless, each Larry appearance is a frightful experience, and Robertson, Jacobs and Gallagher Jr. are superb at selling the scares. None of it, however, would work without Chase’s confident vision, which further parlays its thoughtful scares into an effective rallying cry for building lasting friendships and firmly establishes the filmmaker as a talent to watch.
Now playing at AMC River Hills 10 and Carolina Cinemark
Before you comment
The comments section is here to provide a platform for civil dialogue on the issues we face together as a local community. Xpress is committed to offering this platform for all voices, but when the tone of the discussion gets nasty or strays off topic, we believe many people choose not to participate. Xpress editors are determined to moderate comments to ensure a constructive interchange is maintained. All comments judged not to be in keeping with the spirit of civil discourse will be removed and repeat violators will be banned. See here for our terms of service. Thank you for being part of this effort to promote respectful discussion.