Movie Review: Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich (2018)
I went through a bit of a roller coaster of opinions on this movie while I was watching it. Pretty early on, I was certain the movie was going to be my favorite in the series. There was something about Udo Kier showing up as the best and creepiest version of Andre Toulon.
The movie looks vibrant and colorful, if more than a bit cheap. I don’t know what it is, but this is the RLJE Films look to me. Everything looks fairly stylized, and skillfully done, but definitely on the cheaper end. I think RLJE movies often times are like almost A24 films.
But this is probably the furthest thing from A24 in a lot of ways. As the movie goes on, it gets trashy as hell, and that’s kind of neat.
But it’s also a bit frustrating, because the movie feels like it’s trying way too hard to be edgy and transgressive. With a genuinely witty script by S. Craig Zahler, I kind of wish the humor just stuck to the dialogue, but instead, we’ve got puppets burrowing into pregnant women and digging themselves out of their bellies and pulling out fetuses.
It’s a bit too much. But it’s also what makes this movie kind of interesting.
I never thought I’d see a Puppet Master film that looks like this. This is the first movie in the series that feels truly modern, even though it’s obviously cheap. It just has a better, more vibrant look to it. The puppet effects aren’t necessarily better than what we’ve seen previously. A number of earlier movies, I think, have better effects. But this is a modern movie from a legitimate screenwriter (Bone Tomahawk) that isn’t afraid to be exploitation. It’s not afraid to have the kinds of nudity and sex we’d see in Charles Band movies, even though it’s obviously made by people who have more ambition than Band.
Barbara Crampton’s of course in this movie, to lend it a bit of horror credibility and a nice little nod, I guess, to the first film.
She’s not a bit part of the movie, but she’s good, and she’s far more than just a cameo. She provides a lot of the exposition as a tour guide for the Toulon Mansion, which is neat.
And I appreciate how this movie, though a reboot, isn’t all that concerned with fanservice. The movie’s obviously made with love and affection for the series, but there were few direct references. This really felt like its own movie.
It’s probably the best in the series, and it really depends on how you view the other movies as to whether or not that means anything. I think there ended up being probably three or four movies I really enjoyed in the franchise.
Rating: 6/10
