12 Days in December: Snowbound Sins

31 Days of Halloween continues with 12 days in December.

A Creature is Stirring (2023)
****** (6 out of 10 stars)
Directors: Damien LeVeck
Producers: Natalie LeVeck, Aaron B. Koontz
Starring: Chrissy Metz, Annalise Basso, Scout Taylor-Compton

“Some things are better left buried in the snow.” – Helen

The Review:

My dearest readers, I invite you to join me as we venture into the frosty, claustrophobic world of A Creature is Stirring. It is a film that beckons with the promise of chilling suspense and then, in a moment of baffling carelessness, shatters its own illusion. Come, let us dissect this curious specimen, a work of both commendable craft and infuriating missteps.

Within this cinematic snow globe of terror, there is much to admire. The film excels at creating a suffocating atmosphere, trapping its interesting, well-wrought characters in a pressure cooker of dread. The composition is tight, the suspense palpable, and an underlying message about faith, illness, and desperation thrums just beneath the surface, growing more insistent as the narrative unravels. The entire experience feels like a fever dream, where details fray at the edges and logic softens, pulling you deeper into its surreal and unsettling reality. It is a masterfully woven tapestry of psychological distress.

And yet, this is where my admiration gives way to a most profound pet peeve. The film, in a moment of narrative infidelity, commits a cardinal sin of storytelling. It presents a hallucination from a character’s perspective—a memory of a scene they could not possibly have witnessed; it’s hard to imagine where a character might not be present in their own hallucination. This is not a mere oversight; it is a brazen breach of the fourth wall, a moment of disrespect to the viewer who has willingly suspended their disbelief. Once you notice this trespass, it becomes an infuriating stain upon the entire experience, a crack in the very foundation of the story.

One is left to wonder at the cause of such a blunder. Did the film fall victim to a rushed production schedule? Perhaps it suffered from the all-too-common Hollywood affliction of last-minute studio meddling, where coherence is sacrificed at the altar of marketability. Whatever the reason, this single, glaring flaw prevents the film from achieving the greatness it so clearly courts. An additional round of edits, a more disciplined hand in the cutting room, might have saved it from its own worst impulses.

Despite this egregious error, I cannot bring myself to dismiss the film entirely. It is an imperfect creation, yes, but one that still holds a strange and potent power. If you can forgive its profound disrespect for narrative consistency and accept that you are not witnessing a perfect film, you may find that A Creature is Stirring is still very much worth your attention. It is a flawed but fascinating journey into a storm of both weather and madness. Proceed, but do so with your eyes wide open to its beautiful and broken nature.