Waste of time

Good movie but grossly overrated

Boring

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

This was actually a rather surprisingly nice movie for a SyFy production. Yeah, they usually put out some rather questionable movies. But every now and again they do strike gold, and they happened to do so with "Stickman".Sure while the storyline was generic as in terms of horror movies go, but it was still an entertaining movie.They had some nicely talented acting performers to fill out the various roles and characters. I will say that the performance level was quite adequate all-round.There was a good continuous flow to the storyline, which made for better enjoyment of the movie, for sure.And the creature itself was actually rather nicely made. And this being a horror movie, you of course need to have a proper scary creature or special effects. SyFy did manage to deliver here.So you might want to sit down and watch "Stickman" if you enjoy a good old fashioned creature feature.

Suffering from a series of strange dreams, a woman with a history involving a strange figure that forces her into bizarre behavioral patterns finds the creature is loose and stalking her friends forcing them to band together to find a way to stop it once and for all.This ended up being quite the decent and enjoyable effort. What really makes this one seem enjoyable is the fact that there's a reasonably enjoyable and sensible backstory for the creature at the core of this one. Taking into account the main poem at the heart of the creatures' origins, this setup is quite fun and manages to bring out a rather enjoyable time here 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. The amount of time he has here isn't that bad, either, giving this one a really strong overall setup which generates some solid stalking scenes, from the opening dream sequence on the bus to the first encounter in the sanitarium and the incredibly chillings attacks at the foster home that sets the whole plot in motion. Other big scenes include the creature attacking the couple in their car driving along the freeway which offers all the usual fun of trying to keep the creature from breaking through and leading into the stellar crash while the second half has some fun with the group in the asylum looking for answers to the creature as it begins knocking the group off throughout the hallways which give this a kind of rather exciting kick during this section of the film. With some fine encounters surrounding this with some fun in the convenience store and the group out in the woods as there are some decent enough times here with the creature resulting in some solid gory kills throughout here. These hold the film up over its rather blatant flaws along the way. The most apparent issue here is the fact that there's just no reason here for the connection to the poem and the creatures' release, as this is severely underwhelming and really seems quite unlikely. This is the easiest problem to fix and doesn't really deserve to be as big an issue as it is due to the central premise being it as the notion works, but the whole concept is a big enough issue. As well, there are some big issues with how long it takes for the creature to become known to the group as this has some pretty lame reasons to keep them from believing her even after witnessing an attack that she couldn't be responsible so this one does have an issue there. Along with some spotty CGI for the creature, these here hold this one down.Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Language.

RELEASED TO TV IN 2017 and written & directed by Sheldon Wilson, "Stickman" chronicles events when a 7 year-old girl is accused of murdering her mother & sister and put in a mental institution. She's finally released ten years later and finds residence at a halfway house for girls. Unfortunately, the evil spirit that slew her kin is on the loose again and threatens all the girls at her new residence. A few of them travel back to the hospital to find a way to put an end to the creature's reign of terror.There's a lot of good in this flick: The filmmaking is proficient for a TV-budgeted movie; the locations are decent, which include the asylum, the transitional home, and points in between, like the town and the woods (there are several cool shots of a truss bridge in the dark); it's nice to have a black protagonist for a change (Hayley Law); the five other girls at the halfway house are all regular lasses with no stereotypical "hottie," although a few of them COULD have played that role (e.g. Sara Garcia, Sarah Fisher, Zoé De Grand Maison, etc.).In addition, the film successfully creates a spooky ambiance here and there, e.g. in the woods near the psyche facility; and the demon is pretty effective for a CGI monster, coming across as a meshing of the demon from "Scarecrow" (2013), the aliens in "Signs" (2002) and maybe Freddy Krueger (i.e. the claws).Unfortunately, I didn't buy the premise behind the creature, which came across as half-baked gobbledygook; the poem that unleashes the demon reads like it was written by a 13 year-old and the climatic explanation didn't resolve the overall ill-conceived impression. This naturally hinders the movie from being engaging; it limits the thrust of events and therefore suspense.Note to emerging filmmakers: Work the kinks out of your premise BEFORE making the movie. The director, Sheldon Wilson, needs to work on his scriptwriting skills because the movies he writes tend to be problematic story-wise ("The Hollow," "The Night Before Halloween," "Neverknock" and this one) while his movies written by others can be quite good for TV-budgeted flicks ("Mothman," "Red, Werewolf Hunter" and the aforementioned "Scarecrow," which is excellent).Lastly, the final scene is predictably lame. Still, there's enough good here to make "Stickman" worthwhile for those who appreciate these kinds of flicks.THE FILM RUNS about 89 minutes. There's no info on where it was shot, but since this is a Canadian production it might've been somewhere outside Toronto.GRADE: C

We have all seen that horror movie where some dumb girlfriend goes into the creepy dark monster dungeon looking for her equally dumb boyfriend who was just killed by the monster only to be killed by the very same monster as punishment for being dumb. That is this movie, so you have already seen this movie. If I had to write a 2 page essay on the topic of what was unique about this movie, I would receive a failing grade. There is pretty much no question that this is a somewhat late attempt to cash in on the slenderman meme. If I had to describe the personalities of the lead characters in this film, the phrase "very afraid and doesn't want to die" would be used repeatedly. Many characters literally have no distinguishing personality traits beyond that. At least in crappy 80s horror there would be the jock and the bimbo and the nerd and the coward etc. Different characters to create some variety and keep that character interactions dynamic. The monster itself is a cartoon and the practical effects were basically the bare minimum (blood splatter, corpse without its head, etc.). Expect a lot of off screen deaths.