Director – Rob York (Rustlers, Magellan)
Starring – Chelsea Jurkiewicz (The Seeding, Trim Season), Tanner Gillman (Faith of Angels, The Best of Studio C), and Colin Cunningham (He Never Left, Blood Drive)
Release Date – 2022
Rating – 3/5
Horror movies set during Halloween are a dime a dozen and every year I see several more hit store shelves and streaming services. Honestly, it’s exhausting trying to keep up with every Halloween horror movie there is so I don’t even try to anymore. If something catches my eye I will check it out but it’s impossible to try to watch all these during the holiday season.
However, some films are released and they immediately catch my eye. One such film is Rob York’s Curse of Crom: The Legend of Halloween. I’ve seen this one floating around on social media for sometime and when I spotted it on Tubi I quickly added it to my October horror binge.
**Spoiler Alert** The film follows a young delivery food driver who is trying to save up some cash while earning her father’s respect. However, her neighbor is a bit odd and it has caused friction between her and her father. Her neighbor is an elderly man that often orders food, has her open the containers on the porch, and then refuses to tip. She confronts him about it and when she goes back the next day to apologize she finds him dead. She soon starts to see something sinister near her home and involves her friend who are skeptical at first but overtime start seeing the same thing. They start researching the old man and discover he was Irish and may have been ordering the food to keep an Irish spirit at bay and she may be closer to her neighbor than she realized. **Spoiler Alert**
Curse of Crom: The Legend of Halloween is absolutely nothing like I was expecting but it the kind of film I like to watch as Halloween approaches. I love horror and no one can argue that. I’ve spent my entire adult life covering horror, especially indie horror, and I don’t see myself slowing down anytime soon. However, as Halloween draws near I often want to watch Halloween films. They don’t always have to be horror and some of the best Halloween films are often aimed at children or made for television.
My go to Halloween films are usually WNUF Halloween Special, The Midnight Hour, Halloweentown, Double Double Toil and Trouble, and Under Wraps. Sure, they are not necessarily horror films but they are a lot of fun and truly embody the spirit of Halloween. Curse of Crom is ALMOST that kind of film. It is a bit darker than those films I previously mentioned but it is family friendly, has great atmosphere, but doesn’t really feel like a Halloween film. It doesn’t make it a bad film, because it’s not, but it might not be the new additional to my 10/31 rotation that I had hoped for.
The acting in this one is fantastic. This young cast does one hell of a job at bringing their characters to life and delivering what I would consider genuine performances. The dialogue is heartfelt and down to Earth through most of the film and their interactions with one another is very natural. The cast may be young, but they absolutely kill it.
The story for this one reminds me a lot of the supernatural shows I watched growing up but with an Irish twist. I grew up with a heavy dose of shows like Eerie, Indiana, Big Wolf on Campus, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, and Goosebumps. More modern genre fans may be quick to compare it to Stranger Things, and they would be right to do so, because the show and this film feature a younger cast fighting a supernatural presence except with this film there is no body count. It has great pacing and the story development runs the entire process of the film.
I also really liked the mystery aspect of the film and how you can never fully know where the story is going to take you until you get to the destination. It’s not one that is easily predictable and the viewer can clearly see how much time went into writing it. With all that being said, I would have loved to have a bit more of the Halloween aesthetic. If the Halloween part of the title was removed then the viewer would have no clue it was centered around Halloween.
Finally, the film has a fun looking creature and a lot of tension but zero blood. It’s not a violent film with a body count. Instead, it’s a story rich film that focuses more on the characters than the gore. Overall, Curse of Crom: The Legend of Halloween is a fun watch especially if you are looking for something on the lighter side of the genre. While it’s not violent or the most Halloween looking film, it was still a lot of fun. I highly recommend checking this one out on Tubi before it’s pulled. Check it out.
