User reviews

Sometimes it's best to review a film before it completely slips from your memory. This is one such time. I can't really think of anything really bad about 2010's 'Goblin,' but then I can't think of anything particularly positive to say about it. I guess that's why it's probably the definition of mediocre.

Long ago, blah, blah, blah, supernatural shenanigans, blah, blah, blah, now we have a monster running round the woods killing people. And we have our horror movie.

Only the 'horror' element doesn't really start until around the halfway mark. The first forty-five minutes are all taken up with 'character growth,' only the characters aren't that special. In fact, the lead actress plays quite an unlikable teenage girl who you'll find it hard to root for. The others are your typical horror movie stereotypes. If you've ever seen another similar film you'll know exactly who will live and who will die. All dialogue within the first fifteen minutes is basically exposition and the addition of an old local man who delivers a warning to the main cast adds to the cliches.

At least the second half picks up a bit when the goblin itself makes more appearances. There's not much in the way of gore, but the creature is actually quite nicely designed, so props there, I guess. But the film just seems to feel far longer than its ninety minute runtime. Granted I was watching it on a streaming service, but every time I paused it and saw how far through I was I expected to be half to three quarters of the way through, only to find that either twenty or thirty minutes had passed.

Weirdly, my main gripe came about halfway through when I realised that, despite it being set on Halloween, most scenes took place during the day. Granted, the climax was filmed at night, but I don't think I've ever seen a film set around this time that's supposed to be scary and have it filmed on a nice warm afternoon.

Maybe I'm being too harsh. Like I say, it's not a bad film - there's just so many that do far better with equal or less of a budget. Watch it if there's nothing else, but don't expect anything too memorable.

I did not expect much from the horror film "Goblin" and it still undelivered. "Goblin" is essentially about a fierce goblin who flies around a small town hunting babies, largely because he (the goblin) is not intelligent enough to go hunting in the big cities where there are (of course) more babies to hunt. Normally such a premise presupposes that the adults in this film are perfectly safe from the goblin's attacks because... well... they are not exactly babies. But the people who made this film created a goblin who is less intelligent than many of the creatures on the nature channel. The hyena, for instance, rightly focuses on grabbing a baby sea lion for lunch instead of taking on the bigger sea lions, but the goblin gets distracted while hunting for babies and kills several adults in highly gratuitous ways for reasons that are never adequately explained in this film. I would suggest cynically than the killing of adults was done out of shock value rather than for any logical reason.

But Goblin's problems go well beyond the fact that it is little more than a bloody monster fest. The use of the teenage Cammy (Erin Boyes) as a sexual tease shows how low the filmmakers were willing to go to get people to actually watch this film. Finally there is not one performance in this entire film that is actually convincing or interesting in any way. You get the distinct feeling while watching this movie that the actors simply showed up to say their lines, collect their pay cheques and leave. Not one member of the cast was motivated to making this film work at a performance level.

It's a huge pet-peeve of mine when people who worked on a movie, rate it and review it on IMDb... And, I'm pretty confident whoever wrote the glowing review on this site worked on the movie because no one in their right mind would ever try to make the claim that ""Goblin" takes the material totally serious with zero camp or goofiness.".

I'll bet my life that this script was written in a weekend and put into production for no other reason than because there is a TV network with standards so low, it will buy movies like this. It's a collection of horror clichés and idiotic dialogue. The plot isn't any better. There must be hundreds of intelligent, fully-developed, exciting screenplays laying around in studios throughout N. America not getting made and yet, we get Goblin.. woopity-doo! This movie may honestly be good for a laugh but not much more.

On 31 October 1831, in the Hollow Glen village, the locals sacrifice what they consider "unclean" in a bonfire to protect their village. When they throw a deformed baby in the bonfire, his mother, who is a witch, curses the babies of the dwellers and creates an evil creature from the bones of her son to take their souls in the Halloween. The story of the Goblin becomes a legend.

In the present days, Neil Perkins (Gil Bellows) travels with his second wife Kate (Camille Sullivan); his rebel teenage daughter Nikki (Tracy Spiridakos); his baby son Nathan (Jordan Moore) and Nikki's best friend Cammy (Erin Boyes) to an isolated cabin in Hollow Glen expecting to start a business with his partner Owen (Colin Cunningham). The family is warned to leave the village before the Halloween by the drunkard Charlie (Donnelly Rhodes), but they do not give credit to his words.

On 31 October, Neil, Kate and Owen have a meeting with Sheriff Milgreen (Kyle Andrew Wheeler) and they leave Nathan with Nikki and Cammy. The two girls are visited by three friends and Nikki leaves Nathan alone for less than one minute. When she returns, the baby is missing and the Goblin is killing her friends.

"Goblin" is a lame horror movie where it is hard to say what is the worst: the story, the direction, the acting or the edition. The plot is stupid and full of clichés and annoying characters. The performances are terrible, highlighting Colin Cunningham in a silly role. The edition is awful, with inadequate cuts. The direction is very poor. The result is a forgettable movie. My vote is two.

Title (Brazil): "Goblin – O Sacrifício" ("Goblin – The Sacrifice")

Another SyFy movie... And you never know what you are going to get with these; it is either really bad or actually quite good. SyFy have been known to surprise us viewers from time to time.

Unfortunately, "Goblin" wasn't a nice surprise. That being said, it is not one of the worst SyFy movies though. The storyline was a bit interesting, about a town being cursed for some wrong-doings of the past. But the part with the goblin? Well, that didn't really work well with me.

The goblin itself resembled more a ring wraith from "Lords of the Ring" than a goblin. Now, I know what goblins usually look like in role-playing games, so that is what I am using for comparison. But the whole thing with the creature being draped in a large hooded robe and even walking like a ring wraith, nah! I just didn't buy that. I was waiting for Mr. Frodo to come out and wrestle the goblin. But it just didn't happen, unfortunately. The goblin looked really badly animated and it there was never a doubt of this being cheap CGI in my mind. The goblin looked like something from a 80's movie, it was an eyesore.

As for the acting in "Goblin", well then the actors and actresses were actually doing a well enough job with their roles and what they had to work with. Of course, there is no award-winning performances to be found here, but on the plus side, it is better than what have been seen in other SyFy movies previously.

The movie is labeled as a fantasy, horror and sci-fi. Well I can understand the fantasy part well enough, but the horror and sci-fi? Not so much. The movie wasn't scary, not in the least.

The good part of "Goblin" was that there was a good constant flow to the story, and you never really were left to be bored. Plus there were some nice moments in the story along the way as well. But these were hardly enough to lift the movie up from being under average. Having seen the movie now, I can say that it is not a movie that I will be making a second trip back to watch.

I really wanted to like this film, and I did sit through all of it to give it the benefit of the doubt. But it just doesn't measure up.

For a while I thought maybe it was best viewed as a horror-comedy, but it doesn't have enough comedy, and all of it seems to be actually unintentional, rather than sort of ironic.

The cast is cute, so that's a plus. In particular, Brett Dier seems to be going for a young Ryan Phillippe look, which he carries off well. Unfortunately, Ryan at that age had an agent/manager who cared which films he appeared in, and Brett doesn't.

For a horror-slasher type film, I think we're long past caring whether the writing makes any sense. It's the directing and special effects that torpedo this film. The monster looks and acts ridiculous, and could have been animated using 1990s technology. And if the "loud-noise-plus-sudden-close-up-repeat-twice" technique wasn't already cliché, it certainly was by the time this film was over.

Why do British Columbia and Canada whore themselves out for these pathetic films? They are surely capable of quality work. Is film make-work welfare that important instead? When will people realize that if you're eager to put your name to garbage, you shouldn't expect anybody to ask you to make something worth making. Think long-term, guys.

To be honest, I was expecting Goblin to be complete rubbish, which is the standard I have to put with with a vast majority of SyFy's resume. But I was surprised that while not brilliant by any stretch of the imagination it was not bad either.

True, there are a lot of pacing issues with the movie moving a little too slowly for my liking. Goblin also starts off rather dull and the ending is a let-down and takes a while to set up. The dialogue is better than I thought it would be, but some of it was still rather idiotic.

However, the story is intriguing. While the pacing disallowed the story to do more than it had potential of doing, the idea was great and there are some scenes that have a genuine atmosphere to them. The production values are surprisingly not cheap with decent make-up and effects and atmospheric lighting and camera work. The music is also very creepy. The acting is also much better than anticipated, Gil Bellows especially manages to do something quite special with his role.

Overall, a better film than I thought it would be, but part of me thought it could've been better too. 6/10 Bethany Cox

Filmed in the deep woods of British Columbia, 2010's "Goblin" tells the story of a cursed forest hamlet in Colorado wherein an extremely tall and malicious goblin appears every Halloween to kill newborns and anyone else who may get in the way.

Unlike joke-horror films like "Cabin Fever," "Goblin" takes the material totally serious with zero camp or goofiness. This is the way monster movies should be done. After all, once an element of goofiness is introduced it's no longer possible to take the film serious and be horrified by the events, which is one of the main purposes of horror movies.

I was impressed with the quality of the acting & writing, particularly for a low-budget TV movie. The characters are not one-dimensional; they're written as believable human beings and the actors, professionals that they are, are able to follow suit.

This one has all the mandatory staples of a deep woods horror flick -- gorgeous babes, gorgeous babes fleeing in terror, gorgeous babes fleeing in terror with titillating clothing (I'm just having fun so don't take me too seriously, lol), youthful romantic liaisons, creepy malicious monster, good characters to root for, particularly the father (Gil Bellows) and his family/friends.

The "gorgeous babes" include the main protagonist Tracy Spiridakos, blonde cutie Erin Boyes and Julia Maxwell, the latter clad in an alluring goth-girl costume with stockings & high heels (no wonder the Goblin goes after her!). Bellow's wife in the story, Camille Sullivan, also deserves an honorable mention.

Speaking of the monster, aren't goblins supposed to be small-ish creatures? Not so here. The goblin in this movie is close to 7' tall and has the ability to teleport. When he's fully revealed in the final ten minutes he looks too-obviously CGI and Grade-B Pumpkinhead, but throughout most of the film he appears in a cool black-hooded robe, which somehow makes him more mysterious, gothic and eerie. The fact that he emits a horrible stench is an excellent touch.

One critic panned the film thusly: "the reasoning behind the random killings is terrible. If the thing hunts babies why's it laying waste to random people with no babies? Totally retarded." Answer: The goblin's prime directive is to kill babies in light of the curse and because infants represent undefiled new life and potential. As for laying waste to random people, the old man clearly points out near the end that, because the goblin hunts babies, it sniffs out the scent of infants on any person who's been near one; hence, his attraction to the girls who were babysitting the baby, Nathan. The goblin is obviously a demon, a minion of the devil, do you think a demon is going to spare the life of anyone who gets in its way? What's the purpose of demons anyway? To "kill, steal and destroy." Hence, the goblin was excited at the prospect of extra people to terrify and kill.

On the downside: Although the story takes place during Halloween, it's obviously summertime (look at the kid's clothes and the foliage, etc.). Also, the climax with the car and spear is rather eye-rolling. But these negatives are minor in view of the entire film.

FINAL WORD: Make no mistake, despite being a TV movie, "Goblin" is a standout deep woods monster flick. The goblin is actually frightening and the protagonists are so believable and three-dimensional that you care about them, and are literally shocked when the monster tears them to pieces.

The film runs 1 hour, 32 minutes and was shot in Pitt Meadows, British Columbia.

GRADE: A

ENDNOTE: On another site a reviewer accused me of somehow being involved in the production of "Goblin" since I gave it a "glowing review." The truth is I had nothing to do with this production or any other film production. I'm not in the business. I write reviews simply because I like to write and share my views. Secondly, I had no qualms about pointing out the film's (minor) flaws. Regardless, I stand by my review. I evaluate films according to what they are and aspire to be. No genre is beyond redemption or above contempt. In this case "Goblin" is low-budget TV monster flick and I rated it accordingly.

First of all I am not claiming this movie to be a masterpiece by far, but for a scyfy flick it stands above a lot of the 'syfy' originals I have seen in the past and if you take it for what it is, its really not that bad of a movie. I got a chance to watch it late last night on a snowy New England evening and it was able to keep my attention all the way through. It had decent acting, decent gore, and a decent scenery for a TV movie. I think scyfy has come along way from the some of the older flicks they put out. Of course this movie doesn't really add anything new to the genre, but cmon we can't expect too much from the scyfy network. ScyFy is good for giving small little movies to quench the thirst of die-hards while we wait for the next gem sci fi or Horror movie to come along. If you expect a hidden gem to come in the form of a ScyFy original movie you better pack your lunch. My point is its a TV movie so try to view it as such.

Anyway, moving right along like I said its not likely that we will see Gil Bellows or any of the other actors at the grammy awards any time soon for this, but if you happen to come upon it on the Sci fi channel and don't mind their movies too much you might want to give it a watch.

Keep in mind, I give this a 6 and am rating it as a T.V. movie. If I paid to go see it a theater or bought it new for $14 I would rate it differently.

GOBLIN is a typical monster-on-the-loose type horror flick. It was made by the SyFy Channel and shot in Canada, which is never a good combination; after an elaborate set-up involving a historical curse, this turns out to be business as usual with a CGI monstrosity stalking the woods and picking off a group of characters one by one.

It involves plenty of cheesy acting from the unfamiliar cast members, lots of all-too-familiar chase sequences, and some gobbets of nasty gore to spice things up for horror fans. Unfortunately the premise is better than the execution: what could have been an interesting, supernatural-themed horror flick turns out to be the usual monster guff with every cliché in the book rolled out.

The CGI creation in this - a goblin, apparently, although it looks nothing like one - is fairly effective, looking more like the Grim Reaper than a fairytale sprite. The effects are quite good actually, as are those aforementioned blood shots, but the characters are dull and the situations that unfold are strictly routine. Not much to recommend here if I'm honest.

Typical of the entries in the Sci-Fi scheme of things is this tale of an ancient curse being perpetuated on a small town where danger lurks in the woods whenever Halloween approaches.

GIL BELLOWS is the father who takes his family to a rustic cabin for a vacation, accompanied by a teen-aged daughter (TRACY SPIRIDAKOS) and her giggling friend (CAMILLE SULLIVAN), along with wife and baby. He meets a few of the townspeople and we're aware that something is out of kilter--there's a secret being held behind closed doors and we know the family is in immediate danger.

That's the set-up, accompanied by lots of exposition about witches and an ancient curse involving human sacrifice, with the story set just before and during another Halloween. Actually, the script is fairly good at developing the characters (for a change), the photography is very striking, and the acting on a generally higher level than you'd expect in this sort of horror film. There's some bloody gore to satisfy fans who crave the sight of injuries inflicted on innocent victims.

The goblin creature itself is kept shrouded in a dark cloak most of the time and when revealed is a pretty frightening sight, with all due respect to CGI effects. The music is creepy and the atmosphere of dread takes on a stronger feel for the last part of the story, which takes a little too long to set up the whole thing.

After a dull beginning, not too bad but could have been more tightly paced.

Caught this on The Horror Channel here in the UK, and was expecting another film that I'd switch off after the first 20 minutes,but no, within the first 5 minutes, I was hooked.

It's not particularly original, but it's done with such gusto it feels fresh,and the actors seem to be having a blast which helps.

Considering this was(apparently) a made for TV movie,it was pretty gory in places,with the effects being well done.

I liked it that much, I ordered a Blu Ray of it from Germany for the ridiculous price of one euro! If you see it coming on TV, give it a go, you might be pleasantly surprised.

My advice would be to watch this movie in full before you judge it. Every Halloween, a small hamlet in the deep woods is visited by a fierce goblin, intent on capturing infants and brutally murdering anyone in its path. I refuse to totally dismiss this, because I find it quite engaging, in a guilty pleasure sense. The cinematography is stark and bare, with only the soundtrack adding some effect. Other than that, it was an okay film, and I would recommend that people watch it. My girlfriends and I were so excited to see this movie, thinking it was going to be a fun movie. It gets a final good rating of 7 out of 10 from me.

This is just a mediocre horror that has a CGI monster in it. Some parts did deliver the goods for horror buffs but the action was left out and there's no suspense to see anywhere.

I won't go into any details about the story because that you have see a thousand times before. I was rather surprised about the use of low gore here and there. But it didn't work because there were some faults to see. When one's head is smashed by the monster or goblin you see indeed in a gory way that his face is crushed but the next shot when falling down his face is in tact.

It's one of those movies that you will love or hate. you don't watch it for the acting you just watch it for the horror. I have see flicks about creatures that couldn't stand up against this one but still it's mediocre and just offers here and there a nice 'gory' shot. It's just sad that the goblin was full CGI all the time which shows a few times even as the CGI wasn't that bad after all. It will make teenagers frightened but buffs will have a big laughter with this one, you know what I mean.

Gore 0,5/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 2/5 Story 2,5/5 Comedy 0/5

Arriving in a small mountain town, a family staying at a local cabin-in-the-woods finds that the local curse about a ravenous goblin-like creature terrorizing children is indeed true and must race to save their infant son from its blood-filled rampage.

This here was a rather good creature feature effort, but it does have a few flaws. One of the better features here is the rather strong storyline that comes about involving the central storyline of the creatures' curse over the town, making use of some really creepy moments and a great motive for the creature to get some good moments in. There's some good work done here about the creatures' conjuring in the opening scene that involves the ceremony performed and what's transpired out of it that looms over the town afterward is all quite well-done as the gradual revealing of this in the second half leads to some great times. That also manages to make the action in here fair enough and features plenty of great encounters here. The creatures first appearance in the woods, taking out the necking couple while interspersed with the tense chasing around the woods as the confrontations here make for some really enjoyable action, the attack on the house features some solid stalking with the creature running around the house and their different barricade attempts to hold it back before it breaks in leading to some more chasing to escape which makes for some really great times and the finale features them holding off the creature appearing at the conception pit before leading back to the final battle at the house, which along with the fact that the kills are great at delivering a solid, rousing finish to this one. Given the bloody kills throughout here as a whole, these provide the film with a lot to really like to hold off some of the flaws. One of the biggest issues here is the fact that there are the usual Sci-Fi Channel affairs showing up, so you know what the lame special effects for this one is going to be like. It's got all the usual hallmarks, from the obvious and badly-rendered design for the creature to way too much time of it performing inhuman feats like jumping around while stalking and even manages to come away with another issue here in having it hide away under a cloak for a vast part of the first half, which all makes for a slightly disappointing main villain. Likewise, there's also the fact that this one falls under the notion of featuring the cliché about people who are in the know about what's going on keeping it from those who would benefit from their knowledge, as not only does the one relative who knows how to finally get rid of the creature is truly unoriginal and really just drags the story out when it could've saved them a lot of trouble earlier. As well as a useless and completely overt homage to a classic horror film in a throwaway sequence that's stuck in here for no reason other than to showcase this homage, there's not a whole lot else to hold it back.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence, Language and children-in- jeopardy.

Just finished watching this movie and thought i'd write quick review about it, first off the acting in this movie is surprisingly good, no one seems to look out of their depth and they play their characters well.

The story line is kind of predictable though, its your average horror movie and doesn't take a genius to guess what's going to happen next,but then again horror movies are more about the odd scare or two rather than being too over complex that you struggle to follow whats going on.

The thing what lets this movie down for me is the actual goblin, instead of using good old fashioned costume and makeup they've gone for a more special effects kind of monster which I don't feel is suited for this type of movie or budget, I think you'd be more convinced with someone dressed up with a mask on!!

Overall in my eyes this movie deserves a 6/10 this is mainly due to the fact the actors/actresses are better than your average B movie standards and although this movie won't win any awards it will pass a couple of hours on a night.

A teenager goes to the middle of nowhere with her best friend, her father, step-mother and baby step-brother. Unfortunately, the town they go to is cursed and every Halloween a goblin comes to life and steals babies. When the goblin comes for her baby brother this 17 year old must help save his life. It's not a great movie, but it's not terrible. The girls playing the 17 year old teenagers over do it and act more like they are 13 years old, which is a bit annoying. The CGI isn't bad for a lower budget movies and if you like horror you'll like this. Nothing new here, but you won't want to kill yourself while watching it. It would be nice if horror movies could work on improving the quality of acting in their films. Directors should always be asking their actors, "Is this how you would really react if this was real?"

Is it an Oscar winner? No. Is it a hugely entertaining 'it's that bad it's good' horror movie? Yes absolutely!!!

The only comparison I can vaguely make, and it is vague, is that if like me, you love 'Rawhead Rex', then you'll probably enjoy this. Not that the story lines are similar, but for me it had the same kind of vibe.

For me, a horror film succeeds if it entertains, and this certainly does.

A script that would have been original and worked, I dare say, 60 years ago maybe. Poor directing. "Overly creative" editing (if that's even a thing) that just... fails too many times. At the beginning this film fails every other scene until it starts failing in every scene and it just turns into a comedy.

But let's focus on the best part...

...the acting.

I felt sorry for the performances from almost every single actor. I really did. It's like "awwwww... she can't act" and then "awwww... he can't act either" and finally "awww... this is such a big mess" (note: that's when the master shot comes up and you have both of them in frame hehehe ;).

Seriously. It really is that bad. But it's so much fun at the same time. That's actually what kept me watching this. If the acting was slightly better it would have killed the film for me because then it would have become unbearable. But it didn't so I give it a solid 10/10 because I had such a wonderful time and actually bothered to write this.