The Crooked Man – DVD Review

Prepare yourself for the evil that is the Crooked Man. An ancient evil whose presence arrives through the recitation of song that bears his name. Once called, all who exist in the space in which he has been revived will fall victim to his deadly ways. Can he be stopped?

When a pre-teen slumber party turns to murder, the young girl accused – Olivia – blames the one true killer: Crooked Man. The only problem is that no one believes her, and she’s quickly blamed for taking the life of her best friend. Six years later, she returns home only to discover that the past has not been forgotten, and some wounds, like resentment, continue to run deep.

Olivia soon discovers that her return has also brought Crooked Man back to life and his reign of terror begins once more. As the bodies begin to pile up, Olivia does all she can to stop this chaotic killer from sending her and her remaining friends down a pathway of death. Will she survive?

Delivering on the by-the-numbers horror movie tropes, The Crooked Man has a fun time with its kills, but I felt that the story was lacking in a lot of true suspense or even sense. I kept asking myself questions regarding the lack logic shown by all the characters, which is common in this genre but they lacked it to a higher level in this film.

I wanted more. I especially wanted more of Michael Jai White who’s only in about five minutes of the movie, which was a bit of a disappointment. I kept waiting for him to show up and you do get glimpses of him from time to time, but not enough to warrant top-billing in the film as a whole. Seeing the cover, I was excited about the prospect of seeing an African-American in a leading role in a slasher flick. Sadly, I felt misled.

While I enjoyed the film for what it was, I feel like there was a lot of potential for a stronger story involving the Crooked Man character and a chance to develop stronger characters to battle him. I mean, I get that it’s a TV movie, but I still believe that TV movies can be solid, structured stories with multi-dimensional and motivated characters.

The Crooked Man is available now on DVD.

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