CASTLE FREAK (2020)

Studio:     Shudder/Fangoria
Director:    Tate Steinsiek
Writer:     Kathy Charles
Producer:  Dallas Sonnier, Amanda Presmyk, Justin Martell, Matt Manjourides, Barbara Crampton
Stars:     Clair Catherine, Jake Horowitz, Chris Galust, Emily Sweet, Omar Brunson, Elisha Pratt, Genti Kame, Kika Magalhaes

Review Score:

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Summary:

A blind woman inherits a mysterious Albanian castle hiding a monstrous freak connected to an apocalyptic occult prophecy.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Lavinia Whateley, a devout Christian who practices self-flagellation, lives in an Albanian castle hiding a mutant daughter Lavinia mistreats as a captive abomination. Secret cult member Marku murders Lavinia and sets the creature free.

After partying with their friends Chuck, Larry, Shelly, and Henry ‘The Professor’ Armitage, drug addict John drives drunk with his girlfriend Rebecca Riley, whom Lavinia gave up for adoption at birth. John wrecks his car. The crash causes Rebecca to go permanently blind.

Although she never met her mother, Rebecca inherits Lavinia’s castle. Posing as the estate agent, Marku welcomes Rebecca and John to the small village of Beshtrige. Rebecca begins having visions of her mother’s traumatic past while repeatedly sensing another presence inside the castle’s walls. John dismisses Rebecca’s concerns about a lurking person while conspiring with Marku to keep the truth about Lavinia’s death from Rebecca.

Through Marku, John arranges to buy drugs from a dealer nicknamed ‘The Doctor.’ After providing John with pills, The Doctor insists on remaining in the castle’s tunnels to shoot heroin. John leaves the man alone. The freak kills The Doctor.

Chuck, Larry, Shelly, and Armitage arrive from Massachusetts to help Rebecca and John with the castle. Meanwhile, the freak attacks Marku and takes him prisoner.

Rebecca shows Armitage an ancient book she found in her mother’s wardrobe. Armitage identifies the tome as the fabled Necronomicon. Armitage translate passages that speak of Yog-Sothoth and the Great Old Ones.

John, Chuck, and Larry go into town to sell antiques from the castle. A gypsy woman warns John that the castle is evil and Rebecca is the spawn of a demon. John also learns Marku is not the actual estate manager.

Rebecca recounts a vision of her grandfather tearing a crucifix from her mother’s neck. Based on a Necronomicon passage, Rebecca speculates that her grandfather may have belonged to a cult that worshipped the Great Old Ones.

Despite John’s promise that there would be no drugs or alcohol, John, Chuck, Larry, and Shelly party at the castle. Rebecca and John argue about Rebecca’s claims of someone hiding in the walls. Armitage elects to help Rebecca investigate instead.

Shelly chains John to a bed and blindfolds him for sex. The freak kills Shelly and takes her place atop John, with John too drunk and high to notice. When they subsequently come to free him, Chuck and Larry find John covered in blood and Shelly dead.

Rebecca and Armitage follow a secret passage. The two of them discover Lavinia’s journal, which reveals Rebecca’s grandfather raped Lavinia while possessed by a monster in order to open a portal for the Great Old Ones. Lavinia then gave birth to twin girls, one of whom was deformed. Lavinia sent Rebecca away to prevent the cult from using her daughters to summon Yog-Sothoth. Rebecca realizes the castle’s freak is her sister.

John, Chuck, and Larry’s search for Shelly’s killer leads them to Marku’s cell. The friends free Marku, who warns the trio about the freak. The four men then go hunting for the monster.

The freak slaughters Chuck and Larry. Fascinated by the prospect of summoning ancient gods, Armitage implores the freak to show him a vision of Yog-Sothoth. A tentacle emerges from between the freak’s legs to choke Armitage. At the same time, Rebecca experiences a vision of Lavinia’s impregnation ceremony.

Marku unexpectedly attacks John. Marku reveals his plot to bring the two sisters together so Yog-Sothoth can return to Earth. The freak suddenly mauls Marku.

John fights the freak. Rebecca stops John from beating the creature to death. Calling her a freak too, John attacks Rebecca. Rebecca smashes John’s head with a mace. The freak finishes killing John before extending her hand toward Rebecca.

Cultists gather in the village as the sky darkens. Armitage encourages Rebecca to embrace her sister so Yog-Sothoth can be summoned. The sisters join hands. Tentacles emerge from Rebecca and the freak’s vaginas as Yog-Sothoth appears overhead.

Some time later, Armitage brings the Necronomicon to the dean at Miskatonic University. Armitage finds Herbert West with his reanimation serum in the dean’s office.

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Review:

I don’t believe I’ve seen the original “Castle Freak.” That’s weird because, as a colossal fan of “Re-Animator” and “From Beyond,” the prospect of a fresh foray into Lovecraftian horror reteaming Stuart Gordon and Dennis Paoli with Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton was way up my alley. Fangoria pages showcasing a killer creature design shoveled additional coal into the hype train’s engine. Weren’t there VideoZone spots too? I remember being 100% gung-ho about the movie, which is why it doesn’t seem like a flick I would have forgotten no matter how it turned out.

I think what happened was my neighborhood rental stores ended up not stocking it. Or, now that I notice it premiered on video in November 1995, maybe being away at college at the time reordered priorities. Whatever the reason, this is my way of saying I have no point of reference regarding the original. I can only speak to “Castle Freak” 2020 as its own entity, not to what it does or doesn’t do as far as the 1995 film is concerned.

This “Castle Freak” concerns Rebecca and John, Rebecca’s extreme assh*le of a boyfriend. Why she got in the car with him after he’d been boozing, snorting, and fooling with another woman at a ridiculous rave all night, I’ve no idea. Why she stayed with him after John’s subsequent car crash caused Rebecca permanent blindness I couldn’t tell you either.

John keeps hitting jackpots without suffering consequences when Rebecca inherits an Albanian castle and brings John along. Rebecca never met her mother Lavinia prior to being pushed away for adoption. By all accounts, Lavinia was something of a weird woman, although not as weird as the something that lurks behind her castle’s walls.

Rebecca would like to leave bad memories behind in Massachusetts, which has a geographically unlikely mountainside backdrop thanks to “Castle Freak” being filmed in Albania. Ever the inconsiderate one, John still invites their drunken druggie buddies across the Atlantic. Rebecca doesn’t think that’s wise, partly because strange visions warn of another presence within the stone home. John fulfills the ‘disbelieving husband’ stereotype by dismissing Rebecca’s concerns to host more douchebag debauchery since she can’t see what he’s up to anyway.

Inadvertently attracting the castle creature’s attention becomes the beginning of Rebecca and John’s problems, er, other than all of the problems already posed by John. It turns out the estate agent representing the property belongs to a secret cult dedicated to summoning Yog-Sothoth. They might be able to do it too. All they need is to link Rebecca’s lineage to the fabled Necronomicon as well as the abomination hidden in the walls.

The best thing I can say about “Castle Freak” 2020 is that it feels like a “lost” Full Moon feature from the 1990s. More so than Full Moon’s modern hack jobs at any rate. I ’m sure someone scrunched his/her nose at that notion, as not everyone will see the simile as a compliment. I mostly intend it as one though, even if it’s a bit of backhanded flatter.

What I mean by comparing contemporary “Castle Freak” to “classic” Full Moon flavor is that the film errs on the shaggier side of production quality, but it’s not a total B-movie boondoggle. Like Full Moon films of yore, “Castle Freak” features an Eastern European shooting location, sketchy yet not universally awful acting, unnecessary nudity for three different actresses, and some tastelessly tacky bits like a masturbating monster and otherworldly vagina tentacles. Those probably aren’t the greatest ingredients for a 2020 film. I’m still cutting “Castle Freak” some slack because if it came out 25 years earlier, which it did as a different entity altogether, fans would be more forgiving of its throwback trappings.

I’m also cutting slack since “Castle Freak” is the first full horror film for director Tate Steinsiek, whom “Face Off” fans remember as a two-time finalist in the makeup FX competition. Steinsiek stood out as a genuinely cool guy on that show, and as someone with true affection for the genre. Steinsiek’s affinity for horror is evident in his familiar filmmaking approach, and certainly in the expectedly excellent practical effects he makes sure are onscreen here.

On the flipside, Steinsiek also brings rookie roughness to the project. “Castle Freak” bounces all over with out-of-whack inclusions such as overlong establishing interludes, glass shattering in slow motion, sudden freeze frames, an obsession with rich red lighting schemes, and heavy-handed Christian imagery. Experience should eventually teach Steinsiek to tame the allure of unmotivated indulgences serving little practical purpose. In the meantime, editors Austin Jennings and Stephen Mlinarcik should have pushed to trim a minimum of 15 minutes from the gassy 105-minute runtime.

Fabio Frizzi’s eclectic score provides a prime example of “Castle Freak’s” internal identity crisis, and probably Steinsiek’s green inability to firmly funnel everything toward a distinct vision. Apparently freed from any reasonable leash, Frizzi’s music mixes an unbridled mash of epic arias that sound straight out of a Fulci film, but with jarring doorbell tones that seem like he’s poking a single finger around a synthesizer.

Inconsistencies abound in Spiro Niro’s cinematography too. Niro lets the landscape and massive castle do a lot of legwork simply by having them in frame, which is both smart and economical. Then he gets sloppy with bursts of soft focus and overexposed backgrounds that blow out several scenes.

Actors are iffy, but they at least look like actors instead of random roommates, uncles, and one-timers. A lot of unlikability comes from everyone, even Rebecca during her introduction, being written as a coke sniffing, wine chugging, sex-obsessed party fiend with no other aspects to their identities. Jake Horowitz tests every limit of a viewer’s patience by overplaying John’s obnoxiousness, and that’s due to his grating portrayal. Horowitz was terrific in “The Vast of Night” (review here), so we know he has talent. That swings the blame finger at Steinsiek, the script, or something with the shooting situation for whatever went awry with Horowitz’s unenthusiastic performance here.

The person playing ‘The Professor’ further amplifies annoyance. I won’t use his name but suffice to say, this newcomer is not good. Not only is his dialogue delivery stiffer than a slug of Old Crow, he projects like he’s begrudgingly reading storybooks to deaf senior citizens as part of community service punishment.

“Castle Freak” has been bashed for cardboard characters, schlocky tone, and not living up to its predecessor. I won’t argue those criticisms are undeserved. At the same time, a recent viewing of “Blade: The Iron Cross” reignited my ire for what Full Moon turned into with crap like “Corona Zombies” and choppy clip shows pretending to be new anthologies. “Castle Freak” 2020 reminded me what Full Moon movies were like at their height, with silly storylines, shoddy yet sincere craftsmanship, and midnight movie charm. For me, I appreciate “Castle Freak” for momentarily bringing back those memories, even though I don’t have one of the original.

NOTE: There is a mid-credits scene.

Review Score: 55

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