31 Nights of Halloween Horror - Z

Z

83 mins.

Dir. Brandon Christensen

2019/Canada

Chalk another one up in the almost so good department, it is frustrating with where it falters.  There are some great scares in this film, but some illogical story points and very little background given to explain the reason why anything is happening.  But read on to make up your own mind if you want to give this flick a whirl.

Joshua has loving parents.  One day he gets an imaginary friend he calls Z.  All seems cute in the beginning, then Joshua start misbehaving in school and being defiant.  So much so that he gets suspended indefinitely.  Dad knew about the troubles, but chalked it up as kids being kids and kept it from mom.  So what do the loving parents do when a kid gets kicked out of school?  Instead of punishing him they take him to Play Zone.  While Joshua is playing and Mom is watching, she thinks she actually catches a glimpse of Z, which seems to be some kind of hulking monster type creature.  It is definitely one of the first scare scenes of the movie and a really good one.  Freaked out, mom tells dad who again blows it off as her imagination.  They carry on with Joshua having his imaginary friend, setting Z his own plate of food, which is a total waste, but no one seems to mind.  They take him to a Psychiatrist who discusses the reasons why children have imaginary friends.  When they leave, Joshua tells Z to come along, which raises the psychiatrist's eyebrow, as he seems to know the name Z.  What does this mean?  Don't know, it is never touched upon again until later.  Carrying on to the most shocking scene in the movie where Joshua has a play date with one of his friends, some badass shocking shit goes down.  But again, parents don't punish or talk to Joshua about it, they just carry on.  When Joshua draws a giant picture of Z on his wall in charcoal, again, Oh that Joshua and his imagination.  

Eventually Mom realizes that she had an imaginary friend named Z.  And this is where the story really gets convoluted.  Why did the mom have an imaginary friend?  Did something traumatic happen to her in her past to cause its manifestation?  Did she conjure a monster to protect her and it got out on control and became real?  Why would anyone have a scary monster as an imaginary friend and not be freaked out by the sight of it?  If she suppressed the memory of Z, why did it re-manifest itself for Joshua?  As far as we can tell Joshua never had a traumatic experience.  They really don't delve deep enough into the story to explain why any of this is happening and so many actions defy logic, like Joshua never getting grounded or spoken to about doing bad things, people running faster then trains, cops entering homes with no danger with their guns drawn.  Enough of these things really hurt this movie reaching the potential it has, because some of the scares in it are really effective.  You rarely if ever see Z, and that is ok.  Wouldn't mind a few more glimpses, but nothing is scarier than your imagination.

There is a new movie hitting theatres on Friday called Come Play about an autistic kid who has an imaginary friend monster.  I watched the trailer last week and when I watched this on Shudder, I thought maybe the name of the movie had been changed and this was the same movie.  But there were things I remember seeing in the trailer that weren't in the movie.  I had to go rewatch the trailer, to find out these are two separate movies with a similar pretense and monster.  Good or bad, guess will need to see Come Play to decide.  In the end Z, had some great scares, just not enough. And the story, when not defying logic, was seemed to be kept a secret which only would have probably helped if they shared it instead of hinder.  Not the worst movie you will see, but frustrating because it could have been better.  Boy doesn't that sound familiar.