Nurse Faith (Chrissy Metz) lives with her daughter Charm (Annalise Basso, Oculus), who suffers from an unnamed malady that requires her to soak in a tub filled with ice cold water in order to keep her ever-rising body temperature down… when she’s not locked in her room behind a rather imposing door.
While that biz is going down, Missionary Liz (Scout Taylor-Compton, Rob Zombie’s Halloween) and her brother Kory (Connor Paolo) just break right on in to Faith’s house seeking shelter from the snowstorm that rages outside. Eventually they end up being invited, begrudgingly, to stay… but not before Faith fucks up Kory’s leg with a spike-studded baseball bat.
I guess it’s always good to keep a steady supply of potential victims around, because as the title of the film would suggest… or more accurately flat-out tells you… there’s a creature roaming this feature, and it’s a real demonic doozy and a fuckin’ half, believe you me!
Who will survive this outre ordeal, and how will their secrets affect their chances of riding the storm out?
To say anything more than the above would spoil the absolute bat-shit masterpiece that is Director Damien LeVeck and Screenwriter Shannon Wells’ A Creature Was Stirring; a pschotronic, fever dream version of a creature feature that goes for the gonzo goal-post with tenacity that is staggering as piss!
Taking place nearly entirely within the walls (or in the snow tunnels just outside them) of Faith’s home… a home that is absolutely drowned in gorgeous, multi-hued neon lighting that echoes the narratives theme’s of designer drug addiction and comic book collecting (and creating), while also being right in line with the crazy dark ride insanity of the whole arcane affair!
The acting is equally impressive with Metz going for the gold as the obsessed and haunted Faith… a role that demands going from one to one thousand on the intensity meter and back again; it’s a powerful performance served well by the story’s many twists.
Of course a monster movie should have a memorable beast on display… and let me tell you, the creature action displayed here is jaw-dropping both in it’s surreal aesthetics and out-of-this-world, Grade-A, F’n practical effects artistry… but again, the less you know about these things going in, the better so my !
And while we are talking practical effects, there are also top-shelf gore and transformation sequences that make this one a real horror biz delight through and through!
As for special features on this Blu-ray release from WellGo USA, it contains only a trailer for the film (along with a few other releases from the company). Trust me, the feature is more than worth the price of admission.
An absolutely unhinged creature feature with plenty of twists, turns, and off-the-wall madness, A Creature Was Stirring is a mind-bending, visually stunning film unlike any other and absolutely should not be missed by lovers of bizarre cinema!
