ARTNEWSPRESS: PLOT: A board game traps a group of college students in a dark dimension where they’re forced to finish the game or face the wrath of an evil spirit called Uncanny Annie.
REVIEW: One year ago, Hulu and Blumhouse teamed up for a series called Into the Dark, the plan being that each season will consist of twelve feature films released on a monthly basis, each one having something to do with a holiday or notable date / event in the month of the film’s release. Director Paul Davis kicked off season 1 last October with THE BODY, which was set on Halloween, so now that Into the Dark is moving ahead into a second year-long season it’s very fitting that Davis is the first director up again, taking the helm for UNCANNY ANNIE, another movie set on Halloween. Because why choose a different date when October gives you Halloween to play with?
Scripted by James and Alan Blake Bachelor, UNCANNY ANNIE centers on a group of college students who have gathered together on Halloween to honor the memory of their friend Tony, who died under mysterious circumstances the previous Halloween. Since Tony was a gamer, they also decide to play one of his board games in his memory… They just make a poor decision when choosing which game to play. They go with something called Uncanny Annie, which Tony’s friends don’t remember seeing in his collection before.
UNCANNY ANNIE is basically a horror take on JUMANJI (which gets referenced within the film), as the gamers find that they’re trapped in a dimension they won’t be able to escape unless they finish the game, playing by the rules set out by the playful little girl known as Uncanny Annie (Karlisha Hurley), who has a whole lot of fun while the people playing her game die. Hurley did a great job of bringing Uncanny Annie to life, making her come off as a detestable little creep while she smiles and giggles at people’s pain. Davis and Bachelor were also wise enough to use Annie sparingly; she’s not on screen to torment the characters and viewers throughout, she only shows up when necessary.
The gameplay starts early on in the movie and continues right up until the very end, taking up around an hour of the film’s 80 minutes. This allows for a good amount of tension and action, and the filmmakers crafted an interesting game for their characters play. Uncanny Annie seems simple at first, but of course it gets more complicated, scarier, and harder for the players to endure as it goes along. Uncanny Annie also has some creepy spirit friends who show up in certain rounds of the game to make things even more dangerous for the players.
UNCANNY ANNIE isn’t just a body count movie where we watch cardboard cut-out characters get picked off one-by-one. There is something more going on here. The story goes in directions that I did not predict at all, and the characters have some depth. There was a stronger dramatic story playing out among the action than I expected there to be, and I appreciated that.
Davis assembled a solid cast to play the characters trapped in Uncanny Annie’s game. Dylan Arnold, who played the douchey boyfriend in HALLOWEEN 2018, is here to play another douchey boyfriend in a Halloween movie. His character’s girlfriend, played by Adelaide Kane, steps up to become our heroine as the night goes on. Craig (Jacques Colimon) and his ex-girlfriend Eve (Georgie Flores) have been reunited by this Tony memorial, and they have some issues to work out. Evan Bittencourt played a character I enjoyed watching, and Paige McGhee makes an impression as the new girl who didn’t even know Tony but still gets caught up in this mess.
The first season of Into the Dark had ups and downs, but I was a fan of it overall. I’m glad to see the series continuing for another season, and I felt that UNCANNY ANNIE gets season 2 off to a great start. It has creeps and deaths and keeps the thrills coming, all while throwing in more twists than I thought there would be. I had a good time watching it. It’s a nice little spookfest that makes for perfect Halloween season viewing.
UNCANNY ANNIE will be available to view through the Hulu streaming service as of October 4th.
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Cody Hamman
