By David Dent
Fowler has quite the thing for the mythical killer with the potential for a franchise, having already given us three ‘Jack in the Box’ movies.
Clearly sensing another horror character with legs, he now gives us ‘Grin’. ‘Grin’ is the name of a game, later described as a 17th century version of a Ouija board (although it also resembles a 1960s game called ‘Master Robot’, but that may just be me showing my age). A prologue has shown us that the game has murderous properties, for in reality it’s a demon summoning device, said creature locking in on those who harbour guilty secrets.
Flash forward a few years and the game finds its way into the hands of a family courtesy of Lucien (Simon Davies), a toy collector and art dealer with a perpetually unctuous smile, who found the thing on the internet. Lucien’s wife is Agnes (Virginia Gilchrist) whose three grown up children from her first marriage are far from happy, particularly Eva (Gareth Tidball) who moved to the US with her father when she was 10 and now has a daughter of her own.
Returning to a Welsh family get together she’s reunited with brothers Ben (Luke Rhodri) and Joe (Samuel Lane). No one is that keen to meet again, and for a good reason; they all harbour a secret so unspoken that even Eva’s husband doesn’t know.
Bored of the usual rounds of Trivial Pursuit, Lucien brings out ‘Grin’, a complicated gizmo in which people write their names on a board and a skull with horns points to the guilty; the life sized ‘Grin’ which emerges from the game (looking like a left over from Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth) manifests itself and sets about picking off those with guilty secrets; pretty much the whole family then, starting with Joe who has committed the sin of kicking his wife and child out.
Well done to Fowler for at least giving us a ‘Grin’ origin story and imbuing the demon with the power to mess with minds as well as flesh ripping talons; a very brief cameo from a paranormal expert brings us up to speed on the arcane science leading to its creation, before disappearing. But all this feels like just so much window dressing to a well trod story of a family being hunted by a masked creature in a country rental. Grin though, played by Lucas Edwards, remains a pretty effective character; I get the feeling that Fowler will be returning him to our screens soon.
Bloody Flicks 