STICKMAN (2017) Reviews and overview

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Stickman is a 2017 Canadian supernatural horror film written, executive produced and directed by Sheldon Wilson (Neverknock; The Hollow; The Unspoken; Red: Werewolf Hunter).

The Blue Ice Pictures-Dandelion Production movie stars Hayley Law, Zoé De Grand Maison,  Sarah Fisher, Sara Garcia and Marianna Phun.

Review:

When she was seven years old, Emma (Hayley Law) was accused of two terrible crimes. The authorities say that Emma murdered both her sister and her mother. She’s spent the last ten years in an institution, haunted by nightmares of the demonic monster that she claims committed the murders.

According to Emma, the Stickman comes for you if you make the mistake of reading a poem aloud. The only way to keep the Stickman at bay is to draw a picture of him every night. Of course, no one believes Emma.

At the institution, she has to regularly deal with smug doctors who refuse to accept that she’s being stalked by an unstoppable monster. Obviously, they’ve never watched It Follows or that HBO documentary, Beyond the Slenderman.

When seventeen-year-old Emma is finally released from the institution, she is sent to a halfway house where she is to live with five other girls. They’ve all committed different crimes. One of them is an arsonist. Another one has a paranoid obsession with the dark web. Emma’s the only one to have been accused of murder.

Even though Emma is assured that, as far as the other girls are concerned, “their bark is worse than their bite,” she soon finds herself targeted by Liv (Zoe De Grand Maison). Not only does Liv refuses to believe in Stickman but she also doesn’t want to live with a murderer.

Anyway, as you can probably guess, that poem gets read again. And, on her first night of halfway house living, Emma has a nightmare about the Stickman. However, this time, Stickman doesn’t just stay in her dreams. Instead, Stickman shows up in the real world and starts killing people.

Emma thinks that she can find a way to stop Stickman if she returns to the hospital. Liv, meanwhile, remains convinced that Stickman is a myth and somehow, Emma is responsible for it all…

Stickman is an enjoyable movie. Sheldon Wilson has directed several Syfy films and he obviously knows how to create and maintain a properly ominous atmosphere. Stickman is full of dark shadows and sudden jump scares and, even if he is a bit of a familiar monster, the Stickman is genuinely creepy. Though none of the characters is particularly complex, everyone goes a good job making enough of an impression that you can keep everyone straight.

If I really wanted to, I could probably devote another 500 words to picking apart the plot and citing every logical inconsistency but you know what? That would be totally missing the point. This is a horror movie. It doesn’t have to always make sense, it just has to be entertaining. In the end, Stickman was a fun movie for Halloween. I wish Syfy would make more like it.

Lisa Marie Bowman, guest reviewer via Through the Shattered Lens

Other reviews:

” …setup is quite fun and manages to bring out a rather enjoyable time when giving all the different guidelines for his resurrection as well as the rather complex rules that are featured here for his emergence makes for a generally effective creature.” Don Anelli

“Ten months after Stickman came out, there was the big-budget theatrically released Slender Man (2018) based on the Slender Man legends. However, this ended up fizzling critically and at the box office. Stickman feels like it should have been that film. It operates with far less in the way of budgetary resources but ends up delivering them as a tight and undeniably spooky show.” Moria

Release:

Stickman was shown on the Syfy channel as part of their ’31 Days of Halloween’ season on 21 October 2017.

Cast and characters:

Hayley Law … Emma
Zoé De Grand Maison … Liv
Sarah Fisher … Tess
Sara Garcia … Paige
Marianna Phung … Kate
Anthony Lemke … Doctor Fenton
Dave Alaimo … Ellis
Beryl Bain … Emma’s Mom
Alanna Bale … Andrea
Valerie Buhagiar … Mrs Hill
Delia Lisette Chambers … Chloe
Katie Coseni … Emma’s Roommate
Mary Ditta … Claire
Michael Dufays … Orderly
Patrice Goodman … Cathy
Kris Hagen … Clerk
Martin Julien … Bus Driver
Justin Paul Kelly … Young Jeremy
Erik Knudsen … Jeremy
Sydney Maclellan … Young Emma
Paulino Nunes … Dixon

Technical details:

86 minutes
Audio: Stereo
Aspect Ratio: 16:9 HD

Canadian horror

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