GRIMCUTTY

		Review by E.C.McMullen Jr.
GRIMCUTTY - 2022 USA Release: Oct. 10, 2022 20th Digital Studio, Capture, Hulu, Disney+ Rating: USA: N/A

So this kid sees a varmint and stabs his Mother.

Moving forward, we meet the ratty teenager named Asha Chaudry (Sarah Wolfkind). She's at that age where people who don't give her what she wants, when she wants it, are immature. People who won't be her slaves are Fascists, and people who point out her toxic and hurtful selfish narcissism are boring. All of her friends feel this way, anyone who disagrees are fascists, so how can she be wrong?

Sarah has a truce with her little brother, Kamran (Callan Farris), but nearly despises her parents who have had it with her incessant lying and feel that getting her off her phone for just one week might work.

Sarah holds them in the deepest contempt for this. She is entitled to have someone pay for everything she wants and to even suggest otherwise is fascist.

Naturally she blackmails her little brother into busting the lockbox that their phones and laptops are in, lies when confronted with the obvious truth, that she did it (even though her phone is the only one that's missing and it is in her hand).

Meanwhile, news is getting around about an app that leads to a challenge called Grimcutty. Kids who have done the challenge wound up stabbing or killing themselves or their parents - or family.

So yeah, that is so cool and Sarah's classmates want to see if its real.

Well, her dwindling number of classmates do.

Unfortunately, Sarah had her phone taken from her because she wouldn't stop lying to her parents. Worse, she tells an obvious lie and then pleads, "Why won't you trust me?"

One good reason is that she's a liar on a psychotic scale and clearly addicted to her phone and gossip.

Second is that her parents, Amir (Usman Ally: STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS, AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D. [TV], A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS [TV], THE HUNT) and Leah (Shannyn Sossamon: THE ORDER, DEVOUR, CHASING GHOSTS, WRISTCUTTERS: A LOVE STORY, CATACOMBS, ONE MISSED CALL, MOONLIGHT [TV], SINISTER 2, SLEEPY HOLLOW [TV], WAYWARD PINES [TV], GHOST LIGHT, THE UNDERTAKER'S WIFE) are no slouches in the dishonesty department either. Both of them are more than comfortable in lying, rigging fake family time for suspicious motives, and creating false scenarios that they present as their own even though they're only copying an article they read online. This family fakery is overwhelming to the point that when Sarah's brother has a musical recital, a phoneless Sarah goes in search of a fix, supplied by one of her besties (who she may or may not like).

Out comes suspicious Amir and Sarah gets busted in an obvious lie. She makes up another one to cover the first then wants to know why Pop won't trust her.

This isn't limited to the Chaudry family, but an increasingly paranoid and panicked town of parents and their children. All of which leads to the question, does this "Grimcutty" somehow feed on this?

Because when the Grimcutty attacks, no one can see it except the victims-to-be. And when it attacks, nobody sees the Grimcutty stabbing or cutting its victims, but the victims cutting and stabbing themselves.

Because everyone is dishonest with each other you'd think there was no one to like or connect to. That this would be a mere body count slasher devoid of scares because slashers are never scary.

The saving grace here is that the parents of these children aren't brutal or abusive but genuinely love them. Yet (for whatever reasons: religious, familial, local culture), are convinced that putting up a false front and creating an imaginary home life that will work if you only want the delusion to work, is the best way to protect the ones you love.

And if it doesn't work? Well, that other family that was stabbed to death obviously didn't do it right.

It isn't long before Sarah realizes what "feeds" the Grimcutty and makes it choose its victims. But knowing the problem is a far bridge to getting others to accept that the Grimcutty is real.

Still, once we know what fuels the Grimcutty, it's ridiculously easy to stop it, making the Grimcutty one of the weakest Horror creatures in movies.

What saves GRIMCUTTY as a movie is the acting. Everyone presents a believable, flawed and fragile person, living in a toxic environment that they want to change but nobody knows how to change while still keeping up the appearances of their cherished delusions. And no one is ready to stop supporting the time-honored delusion before they've cured the problem

The screenplay by Director and Writer, John Ross (FREAKY FARON) is nearly mild enough to be a Lifetime Channel holiday special - if it wasn't for the stabbing, cutting, and excellent Grimcutty effects, brought to us by actor Joel Ezra Hebner (FRANKENSTEIN REBORN, THE BEAST OF BRAY ROAD, SHAPESHIFTER, AUTOMATON TRANSFUSION, ORGY OF THE DAMNED, THE BROTHERS CANNIBAL, THE BRIDES OF SODOM, SLEIGHT, SLAY BELLES, THE CLINIC).

The script also often forgets itself.

For example, Leah, long after Sarah is revealed as a liar bordering on psychotic is well established, has her suspicions raised when another parent intimates that Sarah is lying about something. This is entirely believable to us, the audience, as it is repeatedly used to make her all too real visions of Grimcutty work against her as Boy Cries Wolf scenarios. Yet this choke on yer popcorn line is trotted out -

Leah: "My daughter is many things but she's not a liar."

WTF?!?

That's the entirety of Sarah's character!

It's even her turning point moment of self-awareness!

Ages before Creepy Pastas had their say, we went through the many decades of having been here before. Way back when radio was new we had the dead speaking to us through them. We had Printer's devils for newspapers, haunted cars, the dead calling us through our landline phones, our TV sets, powerlines, planes, the Internet, you name it. If there is a new tech, some wicked boo is trying to get through.

GRIMCUTTY as a creature lies somewhere between A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, THE BABADOOK, and THE RING, minus all the scares and sinister power of those movies. Still, like Creepy pastas, GRIMCUTTY is entertaining enough, but just enough. I think I would have been considerably less pleased to pay to see it at a theater than I did as one of the many "free" streaming shows on Hulu.

The tacked on moral, more culturally typical of Japanese genre movies, also weakens GRIMCUTTY. The moral was already revealed. We didn't need a character to look straight at the camera and bleat a Southpark,

"But you know, I learned something today!"

The brighter side is potential sequels with a Grimcutty growing in power and resilience. Most Horror movie creatures start out indestructible and at the top of their game, then flatline throughout the many sequels of simply repeating themselves.

GRIMCUTTY, if handled well as a franchise, has plenty of room to grow in story and characterization, it's just not there yet, making this GRIMCUTTY a good launch point.

And so,

Three Shriek Girls.

This review copyright 2022 E.C.McMullen Jr.

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