Gremlins meets Home Alone in Magnus Martens’ Christmas creature feature There’s Something in the Barn. Can it deliver festive family frights? Or should you stay ho-ho-home?
The premise for There’s Something in the Barn goes to the effort of putting a fresh spin on the festive creature feature, and there’s little doubt its vicious little Barn Elves are a highlight of the movie, but the lights on this Christmas display feel somewhat disconnected.
An American family inherits a rural home in Norway, and figuring it will be the perfect place for a fresh start, the father, Bill (Martin Starr), moves them out there to make a Bed & Breakfast retreat of it. The rest of the family is less keen on the move, but stepmother Carol (Amrita Acharia) tries to make the best of it while struggling with foul-mouthed stepdaughter Nora (Zoe Winther-Hansen).
The son, Lucas (Townes Bunner), learns of the Nordic folklore about Barn Elves, and soon after meets a real one in the family barn. It’s said if you take care of Barn Elves, they’ll do nice things for you, and once Lucas befriends the Elf, it secretly chops wood and shovels snow for the family as thanks.
But on the other hand, to piss off a Barn Elf is to invite aggressive vengeance upon yourself as the offended party does everything in its power to make the offender leave. As we see early on, there’s no line a Barn Elf won’t cross once it’s been sufficiently wronged.
And, of course, the oblivious adults ignore warnings about the ”rules” and set off an escalating series of events that leads to a horde of Barn Elves descending upon their home, intent on spoiling their Christmas in the meanest ways possible.
One of There’s Something in the Barn’s earliest and ongoing issues is that it struggles to pick a lane for its tone. It appears to be playing for the family-friendly (with an edge) crowd, with a deliberately wholesome Christmas vibe and Hallmark-style family troubles. It even utilizes the same festive tune as Gremlins in its opening credits to give you a sense of what kind of picture this will be.
But then it also drops F-bombs left and right, and then goes in on bloody violence during a siege-like third act. Yet when it does lean into darker doorways, it draws back from going too far in. The end result is 2-3 different films poorly mashed together, leaving unpleasant lumps in the mixture.
If I could make a comparison point in terms of tone, Michael Dougherty’s Krampus is the best modern example of doing what I’d call gateway Christmas horror. Despite its dour view of its protagonists, it’s mean-spirited, funny, and festive. It is largely bloodless, but delivers threat. It doesn’t go too heavy on the expletives, but isn’t afraid to be playfully crass, and it entices viewers with its practical effects with well-structured set-pieces.
There’s Something in the Barn is an almost film in that regard. It almost does all those things right, but is quite tentative in applying them correctly. It’s not precisely noncommital, more indecisive about what it wants to be. Perhaps it changed direction during production with fears it wasn’t right for the intended audience, but didn’t go all the way with it. Too much for young ones, too little for adults.
As down on the movie as I’ve been, I’m not saying it’s without worth; just disappointing and muddled in places. Martin Starr is in great form as the bumbling, semi-oblivious father and is the most consistent factor in the whole movie. For pure laugh value, Calle Hellevang Larsen’s turn as a failed attraction owner with knowledge of the Barn Elves is played with the same amusing flagrant ignorance as David Tennant’s TV vampire hunter in Fright Night, just without the flamboyance.
The Elves themselves can be a good time. The very particular rules about them cause some genuinely amusing scenes of absurdity as they get increasingly ticked off by their new neighbors. It does feel like they escalate to murder as a solution way too easily, but hey, I’m not a cantankerous Barn Elf who has been given a repugnant traditional dish as a peace offering.
And look, it may be a tonal mess with some weak writing and a stop-start plot, but it does at least feel festive and occasionally breaks out into moments of being funny and riotous. It’s by no means a bad film. You can compartmentalize some of its flaws and just enjoy it on a surface level, but it does, unfortunately play a little too close to its inspirations for you to forget about them and what they do better.
Score: 5.5/10
As ComingSoon’s review policy explains, a score of 5.5 equates to ”Mediocre”. The positives and negatives negate each other, making it a wash.
