Erax

My kid has seen the trailer and doesn't want to sleep in his room now. PG rating is totally wrong for this one.

After my kid ran to me crying and complaining about monsters on nflix, i had to see it myself.

The only good thing about the movie is that it ends in about 10 minutes.

They failed to capture the charm of gremlins. Monsters are way too creepy, atmosphere is too tense and there is no way a 10 year old can enjoy it.

The story is as generic as it gets. Magic book spews out monsters and little girl runs around with her aunty.

I had my nflix subscription just for my kids for years now, and this piece of garbage of a movie finally made my mind to cancel it.

It should be banned and then burned with fire.

This short provided two things which Hollywood hardly ever does. It had Black sci-fi lead characters with substance. It had Black sci-fi characters that lived to the end of the movie. Great flick.

It's difficult to create a good story with only 15 minutes of time, but this draws so heavily from other works in a way which feels like a cheap collage rather than an homage.

The practical effects and puppetry were very competent though. The creatures looked like they were actually in the film and moved believably, which is more than I can say for major Hollywood productions.

Erax is definitely a horror short designed for kids, right?

It has that 'Nickelodeon' or 'Disney' style cover image, and it's about a young girl reading a new storybook.

The monsters (the best thing about this whole thing) are creepy and could be scary for some children, but they don't provide too much menace and almost come across as endearing. One of them chooses to eat a big bucket of popcorn rather than attacking the two protagonists, for example.

But then as someone else has already mentioned the only music listed for the whole thing has a rather interesting name, shall we say. And someone mentioned use of the F Word but I didn't hear that so maybe it's been cut.

The writing is terrible in places (You want to get fictional? Let's get fictional!) and trite in others (some nonsense gets crowbarred in about the auntie not having time for her niece when there really isn't the time to flesh it out) and the acting isn't much better, although Genesis White does what she can with it and comes across more believable than her on screen aunt.

Definitely one to miss.

Basically, this is Gremlins done in 15 minutes. It's somewhat annoying that the main characters don't catch on to the obvious "fix" sooner than they did... and annoying that they spend more time running than defending their house.

However, given the story line, they're facing an "impossible" situation with no prior experience. Who knows how one would react in such situation? It was cute, predictable.

I would have rated this. 6 stars, but there was one gratuitous F-bomb drop in what's supposed to be a kid's show. That's inexcusable. So 3 stars it gets for the writers, directors and actors being too stupid to stand up for a bit of ethics in making a show that would most certainly be marketed to kids. Someone, somewhere should have taken a stand and said, "I'm not going to do this. Deal with it."

Be a chowderhead, get a low rating. That's my scale.