Stickman (2017)

Sick Product of a Sick System

Don't Believe the Hype

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

I honestly enjoyed this movie,which is saying a lot when SYFY movies (and Canadian),are usually so bad.The acting was excellent and convincing,special effects were way above SYFY standard effects,as was the cinematography. Yes the story line was cliche'd as was the ending,but lets face it,you didn't watch it thinking this was going to be a masterpiece.I'm not going to sit here and over analylise it as one reviewer has,it's not that sort of movie,seriously dude,get a life.Take this movie for what it is,a pretty good horror movie worth a watch,enjoy.

Made for TV film. Stickman attacks its victims in their sleep like Freddy without a voice or personality. It is an evil treant that can be summoned by reading a poem. It can be kept at bay by drawing a picture of it prior to bedtime. Emma (Hayley Law) is in a mental institution as she is blamed for the death of her sister and mother.The fun continues when Emma is released to a half way house. The production is typical in quality of SyFy films. Not a bad horror film, but not one that will stick out.

The character Liv was just outrageous. No teen bully would even try to bully a person, who they think killed 4 adults. I wanted to punch my TV, because her acting was so bad. I can't really say she's a bad actor, because she was much better in other roles. I think these girls are better off in their own Horror/SciFi shows, than made for TV movies. Hayley Law looks like my daughter's mother side of the family. I had to ask my daughter's mom if she knew her.

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