Director: Scott Jeffrey
Year: 2025
Country: United Kingdom
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Slasher
Plot:
After a series of strange encounters, a woman trying to raise her young son learns that he’s been targeted and kidnapped by a deranged Peter Pan, booking to drag him to a fairy tale world he inhabits where children never grow old and must try to save him from the maniac.
Review:
For the most part, this one was better than expected, even though there are some big issues here. Among the better elements within here is the whole idea of the film offering up a series of excuses and retcons necessary to make the differences in the storyline. Taking the place of the usual details surrounding the legendary location is a demented setup involving the main figure changing into a child killer looking to gather other children into the other realm with him, only for nothing to connect to that story at all, with this one featuring the human killer wandering around the countryside looking for people he believes can follow him. It’s a decent enough adaptation to allow the story to come to fruition, as there’s some crossover with the other characters from the fable included here to help tell the story properly in a demented, off-kilter manner. Given that there’s also a slew of impressive kills in this one, from implied massacres against children to plenty of brutal stabbings, impalements, and other brutal mutilations conducted to torture others, resulting in some decent gore, it’s got some likable qualities overall.
Other than that, there’s not a whole lot to be said about this one. The majority of the issues here result from the bizarrely underwhelming lack of explanations for the universe we’re in, since this takes such deviations from the main fairytale but never bothers to explore it. The changes result in this one featuring the killer going around looking for kids to take to this imaginary location, but never bothering to offer why or what the purpose is beyond being a typical madman wearing a mask. Had he been a child murderer who idolized the story and took that as inspiration for his rampage, this wouldn't have changed at all, and he never needed to capitalize on the story in the first place, and the general direction wouldn’t have changed. Even the inclusion of the fairytale characters into a more grounded universe doesn’t fit since they seem woefully unnatural and offbeat for no reason, and the lack of resolution on anything here makes this feel confusing and jarring even without the context of the main fable to draw from. Combined with a slow first half that doesn’t really do much, these all manage to drag the film back.
Overview: **/5
A decent and watchable if wildly flawed genre effort, this one has enough going for it to not be a total loss while being just too flawed to do much of anything else overall. Those with an interest in this kind of genre fare, who enjoy other films in this style, or who are fans of the creative crew will have the most to like here, while almost all others out there should heed extreme caution, if not outright avoidance.
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