Castle Freak (2020)
There's a certain kind of horror film that doesn't make you angry, doesn't make you scared, doesn't even make you laugh. It just sits there, on your screen, doing roughly the right things in roughly the right order, and then it ends. Castle Freak (2020), Tate Steinsiek's Fangoria-produced remake of Stuart Gordon's 1995 cult favourite, is exactly that kind of film. It's less a reimagining than a photocopy of a photocopy: the gothic mansion is there, the troubled family is there, the hidden creature is there, the horror beats arrive on schedule. And yet absolutely none of it registers. Watching it is like staring at a painting of a fire. You know what you're supposed to feel. You feel nothing.
From the opening frames it's clear this is a production running on autopilot. The script checks the genre boxes with the enthusiasm of someone filling in a tax return, and the direction never once asks why any of this should matter. It has the texture of 3am Syfy filler, the kind of film that exists in the background of someone else's life. Gordon's original was rough around the edges and deeply strange, but it had genuine nastiness and commitment. This remake has neither. It feels less like a love for the source material than a licensing agreement.
I'll give it this: the practical creature effects are genuinely decent. The monster design is grotesque and tactile in a way that recalls the golden era of rubber-and-latex horror, and there's something almost charming about the full commitment to the person-in-a-suit approach. But the film undercuts even that modest achievement by leaning into the camp of it all, which tips it away from dread and towards unintentional comedy. When you're snickering at your monster rather than flinching from it, something has gone badly wrong.
The decision to pepper the film with gratuitous adult content is the other major miscalculation. It doesn't read as transgressive or daring. It reads as the filmmakers mistaking shock value for edge, and maturity for credibility. It shatters whatever thin atmosphere has been built and replaces it with something uncomfortable in entirely the wrong way. The acting doesn't help matters. Performances range from wooden to baffling, with line deliveries that feel like first takes accepted out of schedule necessity, and an ensemble with the collective chemistry of strangers in a lift.
If you've spent any time in the lower reaches of the creature feature genre, you'll recognise the template immediately. A thin premise stretched across a feature runtime, effects that swing between earnest and embarrassing, a complete absence of suspense, and a story that never once surprises you. Castle Freak doesn't even have the decency to be memorably bad. It's too inert for that. It doesn't offend. It doesn't entertain. It occupies time and then vacates it without leaving a trace.
Now, I'm a fan of Fangoria as a brand and what it represents for horror culture, and I've got genuine affection for the kind of scrappy, practical-effects horror they've championed over the decades. I reviewed Re-Animator not long ago, which is everything this film isn't: weird, committed, alive with horrible energy. Castle Freak 2020 is the shadow of that tradition, not the thing itself.
The film earns its modest score for those occasional creature-effect flourishes and the fact that it maintains, just barely, a baseline of narrative coherence. It knows what story it's telling. It just has no idea why anyone should care. As a remake it adds nothing to the original's legacy. As a standalone horror film it offers nothing to write home about. Watch it if you're a committed Fangoria completist or a student of modern B-horror with a research question to answer. For everyone else, spend the runtime on something that actually wants to frighten you.
One and a half stars.
Rating: ★½ | Year: 2020 | Watched: 2026-06-01
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Amazon Prime Video · Amazon Prime Video with Ads · ARROW
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Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
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