There is rarely a middle ground when it comes to possession stories. They are either completely over the top or gritty and grounded. The Puppetman follows a girl named Michal (Alyson Gorske) whose father is serving a sentence on Death Row for killing his wife. He has always maintained his innocence and claimed an evil force was in control of his body. When Michal’s friends begin dying in brutal fashion, she begins to suspect he has been telling the truth.
The Puppetman gets off to a nice start. The characters are standard fare for horror – a jock, a couple who still have not slept together, the friend who wants them to get it on, and so on. None of them feel stale, however. Some may not like Michal’s roommate, but that is intentional. They may be archetypes, but the cast keep audiences invested in the characters.
Thanks to the focus on the friends, the first half of the film ends up being the more engaging. There is always the specter that something is going on with Michal, but The Puppetman also spends time explaining the characters. This is where many slashers stumble; the story is so thin that the time used setting an atmosphere feels like an attempt to pad the script.
The Puppetman almost has the opposite feel. The first two acts set up an interesting premise. What really did happen to Michal’s father and how is it affecting her today? The first kill is simple and very effective. It making it clear that something is definitely going on and no one is safe. This is also the turning point in the movie. What was once a grounded story with a touch of the supernatural goes all in on otherworldly evil.
It is Horror 101 and it works, at first. The group works together to figure out what is going on before the inevitable deaths start. And then, The Puppetman just speeds towards the ending. Instead of being spaced out, the kills happen rapidly – with two of them happening simultaneously. A new character also plays an important part without brining anything to the actual story. There is a neat twist involving Michal and a particularly gruesome death in a library, but there is less meaning. Nowhere is this more clear than the final moments. It just sorta happens before one last shot hints that everything is not as it seems.
The Puppetman comes to Shudder October, Friday the 13th
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