Canadian writer-director Steven Kostanski has been one of the creative forces behind a bunch of silly-sweet horror pictures such as The Void and PG: Psycho Goreman that appear to skew towards a younger demographic. Or perhaps his target audience is really the gen X crowd that never outgrew its affection for 1980s fare such as Critters or Gremlins, cheap and cheesy schlock reliant on practical special effects. Luckily, the latter happens to be Kostanski’s speciality; he’s also worked as a prosthetic FX artist on bigger budget films such as Crimson Peak and the TV series Hannibal. All of that comes together for this daft comedy horror farrago, seemingly set in the 80s, about a nebbishy Canadian office worker called Conor (Conor Sweeney).
Conor’s beige jumper alone bespeaks a man deeply risk averse and afraid of having fun, even when his marriage to Kristina (Kristy Wordsworth) is on the line. Stung by criticism from his pony-tailed boss (Adam Brooks) for one that his presentations on subdivisions lack “spice”, Conor calls a hotline advertising a nebulous but supposedly fun-enhancing service supplied by gremlin Frankie Freako (voiced by Matthew Kennedy). Frankie is effectively a puppet, less than a metre tall, who looks like someone dipped a Muppet in latex, covered it in caustic soda, and then ran a car over it a few times. The phone call enables him – and two less interesting, similarly ugly puppet creatures – to travel across dimensions to wreak havoc at Conor’s house, like the Cat in the Hat but without the feline charm or rhyme schemes, but way more fart jokes.
At least Sweeney has good enough comic timing to make the thinly written dialogue sound vaguely amusing; he’s also adept at making his many reaction shots exaggerated just enough to tickle without descending into outright mugging. Elsewhere, the words “freak”, “freaky” and cognates from that root are used so often that a drinking game in which players down a shot each time they are uttered would trigger alcohol poisoning after 20 minutes or less.
• Frankie Freako is on digital platforms from 14 July.
