In the age of rapid technological advancement we’ve been living through, almost every single person with access to the internet has surely felt that they’ve been getting a little too much screentime. Sometimes, it’s beneficial to switch everything off and go analog for a while, and Jacob Chase’s haunting Come Play might encourage you to get it done a little faster.
The writer and director goes all-in on the jump scares from start to finish, and as satisfying as it proves to be on occasion, the end product would have been much better were the story as well-orchestrated and impeccably assembled as the seriously jarring frights, with a special shout-out reserved for Larry – the monster who does not live up to his everyday name.
Come Play focuses on lonely Oliver, who spends almost all of his time with his face pressed up against a tablet or smartphone screen, with his parents hoping he’ll swap computers for companionship eventually and make friends. Instead, he ends up summoning a long-limbed creature that weaponizes an app as a means to gain entry to the physical plane.
While there isn’t enough narrative meat to sustain such intriguing bones for the entire 96 minutes of its existence, Come Play delivers the goods when it comes to making you almost come flying out of your chair in terror – which is presumably why it’s taken off on Netflix.
It might be the week of Christmas, but subscribers continue to wear their undying love for horror on their sleeves, after FlixPatrol outed Come Play as one of the highest-flying new additions to the library so far this week.