Main cast: Elizabeth Hurley (Liz Haines), Mia Jenkins (Amy Haines), Jack Stewart (Luca Shandor), Robert Daws (Peter Weiss), Tara Fitzgerald (Auntie Aishe), and Ieva Aleksandrova-Eklone (Beate Hofmeister)
Director: Anthony Waller
The Piper is reimagination of the Pied Piper of Hamelin story, only darker in the sense that the Piper shows up to kill one’s child when that person commits crimes or sins and isn’t punished by the law for it.
In this one, Liz Haines arrives at Hamelin with her teenage daughter Amy, for the usual “starting a new life in a new town, yadda yadda yadda” routine. The kids in this place are far from impressed that their new History teacher looks like Elizabeth Hurley, however, which should be a clear sign that the folks in this place may not be quite right in the head.
Indeed, soon weird things happen, whether it’s jump scare or sleepwalking kids or an infestation of rats. Worse, Liz has come to Hamelin to flee her past… a past that may cause the Piper to be very interested in Amy for all the wrong reasons.
Fortunately, Amy soon starts up a romance with a street magician, Luca, who knows more about the Piper than most people in town. What he knows may be key to saving Amy.
Now, while this movie is marketed as horror, it feels more like a supernatural drama as there aren’t that many scares or chills to be had here. The movie seems to want to focus on the characters first, making their relationships and issues pivotal to the story, but that’s what the movie fumbles somewhat. These characters just aren’t that interesting or well developed for me to care.
While Elizabeth Hurley and Mia Jenkins put on performances good enough to make the movie watchable, their characters never really go beyond the usual single mother and her daughter thing that has been done countless times already in movies and books and everything else. Sure, there is a supernatural element this time around, but it doesn’t stop me from feeling that I’ve come across Liz and Amy so many times already.
The other pivotal relationship, the romance of Mia and Luca, fares worse because Ms Jenkins and Jack Stewart have zero chemistry. He looks much older than she, as well, which makes the romance rather icky from a visual standpoint. While these two are supposed to be in love, the lack of chemistry between them makes the romance a hard sell.
Because the focus is so much on the romance, a part of me worries at first that this movie is going to pull the “our pure and twee love will destroy all evil” nonsense on me and… yikes, it does. Still, had the romance been breathtaking and wild, I wouldn’t mind it. However, the romance is like watching two potatoes rolling around one another, so I can only groan instead.
On the bright side, the music and the scenery are lovely, which go a long way to materializing a spooky, eerie, and gorgeous atmosphere in this movie. However, all this is wasted on a movie that is reluctant to spin new takes on tired old tropes, as well as to base the entire thing around a romance that falls flat and never really manages to get up at any moment throughout the run time.
All in all, the whole thing feels like a huge missed opportunity. It’s almost watchable, but even then, all the missteps made by the people behind this movie would only elicit more wincing than gasping.
