2/5 What a disapointment.
  by Micheal Hunt (Hellbourne)
When I was reading that this movie is made by the same people who made the Puppetmaster series, I thought this may be a cool little movie to check out. How wrong and mislead I was.

The film is about a family that live in a castle somewhere in Italy. They are somewhat a family something like the Addams Family but not as bizarre as more just insane. The father of the family does not take kindly to strangers, and wants his free spirit daughter to be kept isolated from the outside world. However the castle is visited by 3 people who claim they want to inspect the castle for a Hollwood film, the father says no, but the daughter ends up inviting them over for dinner, and there real agenda begins to unfold. A story that is told by the mother to the three is that the castle is protected by these guardian angels known as The Skull Heads. And they have the ability to bring back the dead if necessary, but will not harm anyone unless they are evil.

Now if that plot sounds stupid, it's because it is. These Skull Head puppets they use in the film almost have no purpose at all in the entire film; they look silly, and if they decided to cut there scenes out, and just call the movie something else, it might make a little more sense then why the whole movie is supposed to be based around these things that have probably a total of 5 to 10 mins in the whole movie.

Fans of the Puppetmaster series, like myself, will be really disappointed in this movie. It wont surprise me if anyone who watches this movie will see the end credits start rolling, leaving you sitting there thinking, "Is that it?" it's like someone pulled the plug on making the rest of the movie and printed what they had done so far for a release. I highly doubt it will get a sequel as this one is not going to make very much from sales and will not generate much interest from anyone who doesn't know it's relation to the Puppetmasters. However, even the puppetry in this movie from 2009 is a really poor effort compared to even the original Puppetmaster movie... I think even Howdy Doody looked more appealing then the things in this movie.

The acting of the film is also off. The father seemed to be trying to act like Robert England, but not doing a good job of making his character believable enough, you hate him one minute, then not the next, and it really felt out of balance for a horror movie. The mother was also the same, she does things that makes her seem sweet and kind, then other things that make no sense why she is so snobby. The daughter is just weird going from normal to a little girl to a nut case and round and round. The uncle is something you expect to go a different way by the end, but doesn't, the chefs of the house do a decent job for there role, and the 3 hollyweeders who come to check out the place seemed ok for a while, then got too goofy by the end... tho the end of it was really goofy anyway so i don't expect any other actor would have taken these roles seriously either.

Overall, it might sound good to try and take a family like The Addams and incorporate PuppetMaster into it, but this movie will show you exactly how not to do it. The plot is weird, things don't make sense, things where not needed, like the Skull Heads themselves and the daughters time wasting nude scene, the acting goes from decent to bad, too many things left unanswered, or just should not have been there in the first place if it doesn't play out later, I could go on, but just take my word, if you are going to check this film out, don't have high expectations, it is a real let down.

What they should do, is cut out the highly unneeded and useless nude scene, give it a PG rating and let.... no, hang on, even kids would find this movie stupid.