BENNY LOVES YOU (2019)

BENNY LOVES YOU (2019)

Tagline: Once was yours but thrown away, he'll live to play another day...

(Horror, Fantasy, Rubbish) [R]

Note: This film wasn’t given an MPAA rating. It would have been an [R]. 

Don’t worry, he’s like that with everyone, you’re nothing special. 

In this one, Jack is looking to improve his life and has even been promoted at his job to come up with some new toy designs. As part of his decision to improve his life, he decides to throw out an old stuffed toy teddy bear named Benny. Benny has issues with being thrown out and comes to life hoping to “help” Jack by killing anyone giving him problems, or really just anyone doing anything. 

To date out of all the “your toys might kill you” movies I have seen, this one is by far the bloodiest and goriest, but it’s kind of tempered by the fact that this was an independent studio called DARKLINE ENTERTAINMENT which seems to be mostly handled by the movie's star Karl Holt. Because of this, the effects all come across as very “80s” which is why I was even interested in this movie, to begin with. Of course, all the gore wasn’t in the previews. Had it been, I would have skipped this thing because I am not a gore fan. The filming for this was actually completed back in 2015, but Karl apparently had all of the effects, etc., to handle after that. 

One big issue with this movie is that the humor is so subtle in the first half of the movie that it’s almost hard to figure out what parts were supposed to be funny and which weren’t. One other issue is that because Jack spends most of the movie just covering for the atrocities that Benny is doing, he’s not a “likable” character for most of this movie. There are a few nods to GREMLINS, HOME ALONE, and THE TERMINATOR in this, but they are only mildly humorous.

What works in this thing, is when they are going for seriousness and Dawn’s recollection of her childhood. They use part of the “Living Doll” Twilight Zone episode only a version made for this movie which was one of the more eerie episodes of The Twilight Zone back in the day. There are also a couple of montages that are pretty cool and effective in breaking up Jack’s spiral and the movie overall. I actually love the soundtrack; it really punches this thing up in moments where it starts to drag especially in the second half of the film where things finally get moving in the right direction. I also liked that they threw a cool little robotic toy in this that can also fight. I also liked that the final sequences are loaded with fun effects. I also liked that in the credits they have this… All characters and events depicted in this film are entirely fictitious. Any similarity to actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Apart from Benny coming to life and killing everyone. That bit is totes true. Laters. I thought it was pretty comical. 

Acting wise this is pretty solid, especially for a low-budget film. Karl Holt is sufficiently duplicitous as Jack. I say duplicitous because he is actually a nice guy, but doesn’t take any actions to really stop what’s going on until things have gotten way the freak out of hand. Claire Cartwright who plays Dawn is good, but her character really isn’t that likable either. Anthony Styles and Darren Benedict are decently comical as Good Cop and Bad Cop, but I don’t think they got enough screen time. 

I have mixed feelings about this one. Like I said earlier, gore is not my thing even when it looks full 80’s cheesy. It does look like they made it purposely goofy looking. The second half of the film makes up for a lot of the first half’s shortcomings. So I have to give credit where credit is due. There are some pretty great sequences in this and some really interesting and cool directing choices. 

For those reasons, I have to give this one a 4 out of 7. If the first half of the film had been better, I would have bumped up the score. Compared to CHILD’S PLAY 1, 2, and 3, I don’t think this holds up but compared to some of the other films in the series it does.  

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF IMPOSSIBLE DREAM ENTERTAINMENT AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY.