"All Fun and Games" wastes an enticing gateway-horror premise and a likable group of actors

All Fun and Games (2023)

An enticing premise and a solid group of young actors would seem like a surefire pairing to make “All Fun and Games” a piece of grisly-fun Gateway Horror in the bloodline of the “Fear Street” trilogy. What comes out to play instead is a slickly produced but annoyingly shrieky supernatural slasher flick with schlocky effects, too much telling over showing, and a lot of wasted potential.

Writing-directing team Eren Celeboglu and Ari Costa, along with co-writer J.J. Braider, seem to have watched a lot of horror movies, but a little more refinement for their feature debut would have been for the best. Off the top, “All Fun and Games” commits two tropes that need to just die: (a) the end of the story needlessly opening the film, and (b) a mumbly, “I know what you’re thinking…” voice-over narration that laboriously explains a familial dynamic. Without these tropes, the film might run three minutes shorter, and it’s already an overly trimmed-down 76 minutes.

Natalia Dyer plays Billie, who does basically feel like Nancy Wheeler from “Stranger Things,” only with darker, less flattering hair. She’s a teenager with hopes and dreams of getting out of Salem and moving to New York with her jock boyfriend Pete (Kolton Stewart). Her brothers, troubled Marcus (Asa Butterfield) and impressionable Jo (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth), come across an old diary and a bone-made knife cursed by a demon in an old cabin, and Jo brings home the knife. When the carved words on the knife are spoken and Jo is possessed, the demon then jumps into Marcus, turning him into a vessel who carries out a series of twisted children’s games (Hangman, Hide and Seek, and Red Rover) with fatal results. Read the full review at GuyAtTheMovies.com

Grade: C

Vertical released "All Fun and Games" (76 min.) on VOD platforms on September 1, 2023.