THE PUPPETMAN - Mark Reviews Movies

The Puppetman, Shudder

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 12, 2023

The main hook of The Puppetman is quite frightening. It involves an unseen, demonic presence that is capable of taking control of a person's body. Co-writer/director Brandon Christensen doesn't portray the consequences of that act as a kind of mindless state or someone being possessed entirely by a spirt, though. These victims are conscious of the fact that they can do nothing about what's happening to them, meaning they watch as passive observers as their body moves—usually in fatal ways—against their will.

It's a simple idea, to be sure, but the execution of it is what's so unnerving. The rest of the movie surrounding that idea is a mixed bag, filled with some brutally bloody deaths that are troubling to watch—as they should be under the circumstances—and a threat that's initially defined primarily by its actions. That's the good stuff.

The less-effective elements come down to the writing, which doesn't create characters worthy of much sympathy beyond the thought of how horrifying their final moments must be and eventually succumbs to the sort of expository nonsense that the movie does so well to avoid for a while. The third act of the movie is a confounding one, because its climactic showdown with the demon—a sort of battle of wits, at least—demands a lot more information about it than the screenplay provides. The screenwriters, the director and his brother Ryan Christensen, try to cram a lot of that information into the final stretch of the story, so it's difficult to determine if there's an actual explanation here of how things go down and why the characters would imagine it working.

Either way, the buildup to that convoluted climax is increasingly effective on its own terms. We meet Michal (Alyson Gorske), a college student who's spending a holiday week on campus with a group of her friends. That includes her dorm roommate Charlie (Angel Prater), who's apparently the only reason Michal has any college friends in the first place.

Michal has a terrible family history. Specifically, her father David (Zachary Le Vey) murdered her mother when she was a child, who was locked up in a cage in the house. She doesn't remember the vicious killing, but we see it, as David arrives home, grabs a knife, and, through clenched teeth, tries to warn his wife to run, while pleading that it isn't him stabbing her. His claims of being possessed by some unknown entity have given him the nickname "the Puppetman," and with his death sentence about to be carried out within the week, the story continues to garner some attention.

Obviously, most of this becomes an excuse for Michal and her pseudo-friends—crush Danny (Kio Cyr), pre-med student Jo (Anna Telfer), and Glenn (Cameron Wong), who finds Michal and her past creepy even before things go wrong—to be haunted, tormented, and controlled by the demon. The backdrop, a mostly empty college campus, is appropriately atmospheric, and despite some clichéd elements (crows appearing, following, and smashing into the window when Michal is around), Christensen lets the mood speak for itself (and with a bit of humor, such as showing us the guy who has to clean up the mess left behind by those crows).

The selling point—and it's a solid one—is the demon, which is never shown, and the way it does its awful deeds. A character might be talking on a rooftop, for example, and in the middle of speaking, said character might stop and stiffen. The eyes dart around, looking for some understanding of the sudden paralysis, and any attempt to speak is muted by the fact that the person's mouth can barely open to form an intelligible syllable.

The awareness of what's happening, as well as the knowledge that there's nothing to be done about it, is why this is conceit is as chilling as it is. It's the helplessness of the situation, as the person's body starts walking toward doom as the character's mind is fully conscious of the fact. The first death—after the prologue, of course—is a shock, but once the screenplay establishes the process, Christensen builds suspense from the inevitability of the gruesome deaths that are about to unfold.

Like the characters, we can sense what's coming, whether that be a slightly silly scene involving a cigarette in a library or its counterpart in a weight room. The filmmakers play on that dread. If some of the performances come across as a bit stiff (The early dialogue doesn't help, but then again, neither does the latter stuff, which has characters doing a lot of explaining of the supernatural), that's, well, sort of to the movie's benefit once the grisly human-puppet acts begin.

It's a shame, then, that the whole narrative doesn't accomplish the sort of twistedly satisfying payoff that the movie's individual scenes of horror do. With a feeling of disappointing inevitability, The Puppetman starts making up rules as it goes, tries to establish more back story than it needs, and relies on the characters plotting a scheme against the demon, without explaining the mechanics of what's supposed to be happening in the first place. The movie does so much right, in spite of and because of its limitations, that it's ultimately frustrating how much it botches in the final stretch.

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