Come Play is often a surprisingly effective chiller when it’s not trying too hard to fill 96 minutes of screen time. The same guy wrote and directed it so he’s got some talent at filming creepy, scary individual scenes but needs some work tightening the script or, more likely, turning in something that doesn’t adhere to the standard issue horror movie run time.

Come Play is about a lonely mildly autistic boy who uses smart phones and tablets to communicate. But a mysterious digital storybook shows up on his screen, telling the story of Larry the Misunderstood Monster… who is a real creature who just wants to be the boy’s friend… no matter the cost.

Larry, as an idea, is a little ridiculous if you really think about it. What did Larry do before screens were invented? Did Larry draw and write the storybook? Did he upload it to the app store? But this is one of those “beware of technology” or evil app movies that maybe doesn’t require too much thinking from the audience. Why start now with silly horror premises?

But the “don’t think too hard about it”-ness is indicative of really how derivative this story ultimately is. To say it borrows a lot – but doesn’t achieve the heights of – The Babbadook would be pretty accurate. This is about tightly wound parents trying to protect their son from a monster from a storybook. But this movie also borrows too much from other evil app movies, Slenderman, and other recent horror films. That doesn’t, as I stated above, mean there aren’t some good effective scares… but that more time needed to be spent polishing the script.

I enjoyed the movie more than I thought I would though. I did like the actors and the scattered scary set piece moments were pretty good to quite good. I just lost patience with the wheel-spinning and time-wasting… like with too many horror movies that just need to fill time.

Score: 78