Main cast: Jenny Boswell (April), Chad Patterson (Ryan), Emily Sue Bengtson (Jennifer), Tari Lyn Bergoine (Dorothy), Erin Eva Butcher (Carmen), Melissa Moore (Gladys), Ashton Wolf (Dr Lantmen), Zach Zebrowski (Flynn), Pakob Jarernpone (Warren), Rick Montgomery Jr (Rufus), Madeleine Dee (Receptionist), Bill D Russell (Maximilian Cuda), John Anthony Capocci (Sydney Fine), Spencer Kawalek (Morgue Corpse), Laura Dennis (Rebecca), and Jesse Guilmette (Luther)
Director: Dave Parker
Puppet Master: Doktor Death is a standalone entry into the Puppet Master series, and it’s definitely a Full Moon Features movie alright: filming started in July 2022, and the movie was released on October 2022.
Yes, one can tell just from looking at the first 10 minutes of this thing that it’s going to more of an exercise of enduring bad acting, bad cinema work, and bad CGI instead of a movie to enjoy.
Welcome to Shady Oaks Senior Living, where the Doktor Death doll mentioned in the title and seen in the movie poster will terrorize and, of course, murder the staff and the residents. That’s basically the plot.
The characters are horror movie staples without any effort done to flesh them out, and the acting is… well, let’s just say that maybe the casting direction is to find “actors” that are willing to work for a Snickers bar or something. Every cast member has a hard time delivering their lines in a non-robotic, non-reading-aloud-from-teleprompter manner. Maybe they don’t want to upstage the puppet?
Speaking of which, that puppet is hardly animated. That is, unless I count being shaken left and right or up and down by someone off screen as animated. Does the arm even move? I can’t recall, although that could be because I’m experiencing rigor mortis in half my body while I’m watching this.
Yes, it’s that boring. This movie does the usual trick of films with barely a budget: everything takes place in a single location—Charles Band’s very own house, in this case—and every scene is filmed in as much close up as possible, so that they can keep post-production and hence money needed for that to a minimum. Because too many special effects go beyond the budget, the movie focuses more on the vapid humans talking and doing stupid things, instead of the fun gory goop one would expect to get from a film of this kind.
Also, what on earth is that ending all about? It is one thing to throw a twist on me, but that particular twist is so abruptly dropped into this movie that it certainly feels like the people behind this thing just spread their butt cheeks wide and let a big one plop onto the screen.
The end result is a movie that looks and, more damning, feels cheap without any fun factor attached. This is just a boring, wooden, and scare-free thing that is clearly made on cheap ASAP to fill up the Full Moon Features streaming catalog. They probably hope people will watch it just because of the Puppet Master in the title.
It’s not like cheaply made movies can’t be fun. The first two movies in this franchise, maybe the third one as well if I wanted to be generous, are proof of that. Sure, this one tries to recapture the Charles Band vibes of those movies, but not with this level of bad acting and worse everything else marring this thing.
