Castle Freak

Castle Freak marks the directorial debut of Tate Steinsiek, an award-winning special effects artist (Face Off, Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich). The film is produced by Barbara Crampton (star of the original Castle Freak) and written by Kathy Charles (The Kings of Mine). Clair Catherine, Jake Horowitz (The Vast of Night), Chris Galust (Give Me Liberty), Kika Magalhaes (The Eyes of My Mother) Emily Sweet (Syn), Elisha Pratt (True Detective) and Omar Brunson (Shadow Fighter) make up the cast. The music is composed by Fabio Frizzi (The Beyond and Kill Bill). The first worldwide broadcast of this re-imagination of Stuart Gordon's 1995 horror film was released on December 3rd on Shudder and is available since December 4th in VOD & Digital HD.

It is interesting to see that even horror movies that went quite unnoticed in the 90s can also make the effect of a more modern remake and especially benefit from a greater freedom even if they do not faithfully respect the vision of the original movie. This new version is even more oriented towards a tribute to one of the greatest writers of fantasy literature, H.P. Lovercraft. Like the original film, the scenario of this new version of Castle Freak is inspired by two short stories by this author: The Outsider and The Rats in the Walls.

The script written by Kathy Charles keeps the two main elements the castle and its monster but totally revisits the rest of the story and above all offers a much more memorable ending which makes it the main reason to discover this movie. After his first film Addiction: A 60's Love Story (2015), Tate Steinsiek proposes with Castle Freak a horror film very dated 80's in which we find again a serial killer (in this case, a deformed creature) who will not stop exercising his vengeance on the people inside the castle in which he continues to live within the walls and depths of it. Clearly more skillful in proposing quite successful special effects, Tate Steinsiek's direction is hard to convince and especially his film lacks rhythm. The casting also seems to be left to its own devices and can't manage to hold our attention.

However, we must admit that this tribute to H.P. Lovercraft could have been totally convincing with a larger budget and by proposing as the very successful final scene a vision quite close to the one conveyed not only by the excellent series Lovecraft country by Misha Green and the film Color Out of Space (2020). The universe of H.P. Lovercraft has enough appeal to give life to original, successful and gripping films. In the case of Castle Freak, the result is certainly not good or bad, just lacking a real vision of an inspired director and especially a better transposition of a scenario that does not lack various spices to satisfy the expectations of genre film enthusiasts.

Castle Freak
Directed by Tate Steinsiek
Produced by Barbara Crampton, Matt Manjourides, Justin A. Martell
Written by Kathy Charles
Starring Jake Horowitz, Emily Sweet, Kika Magalhães, Chris Galust, Elisha Pratt, Omar Shariff Brunson Jr., Genti Kame, Clair Catherine, Klodian Hoxha
Music by Fabio Frizzi
Distributed by RLJE Films (USA)
Release date: December 4th 2020 (USA)
Running time: 106 minutes

Viewed on December 04, 2020 (screener press)

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