The Shed

Living with an abusive grandfather, a bullied teen trying to get out of his small-town without getting into confrontations with a local bully finds that a mysterious, deadly creature has taken residence in a shed in his backyard, and after trapping it decides to use it to take care of his bully problems. There ended up being quite a lot to love here. Among the best attributes to this one is a fantastic backstory bringing together numerous intriguing subplots into the mix. The main teens' tragic family history and being forced to live with a relative who doesn't want him and tries raising him to his old-school ideas tells us quite a bit about their history together, much in the same way the intricate web of backstories relating to their high-school lives is carried out. Interconnecting not only the bullies that have tormented him and his best friend for years that has also hooked up repeatedly with his best friend who he has a crush on, these interlocking stories give strong emotional resonance to everything while also leading into each other in a way that showcases incredibly strong writing as well as creativity to accomplish this. There's also a lot of great work here with the horror segments. Opening up with the creature hunting a victim through the woods and attacking him only to be saved by a sheer coincidence yet realize he's become afflicted with the curse is a strong start by giving us an idea about the beast and some of its characteristics to start things out. As well, it also provides an excuse as to how it ended up in the shed where his first few encounters provide some chilling and shocking moments of the creature attacking his family in order to set up the later scenes where they lead people to the shed inadvertently. That these are short, intense and brutal works just as well as the traditional stalking scenes throughout the house at the end that's filled with suspenseful searching, gore-filled kills and tons of action which really ends this one on a high note. However, the film scores the most with the incredibly complex theme of vengeance carried out against tormentors. This one rightfully brings up the idea almost immediately upon the realization of the creatures' presence about using it to get revenge on the bullies by leading them into the shed, and it's quickly rebuffed as unethical. Still, the unyielding desire to go so far as to willfully ignore him and do it anyway raises plenty of strong issues about the morality of this since that inevitably leads to the creature getting free through the simple-minded and shortsighted desire for all-consuming revenge. That lack of logic and reasoning is a hurdle for some to get over, while a lame and ham-fisted back-and-forth confrontation that relies more on quippy puns than actual legit fighting to stop the creature could be considered an issue yet none of these are really that detrimental. Rated Unrated/R: Extreme Graphic Language and Graphic Violence.

... what a good movie that this could have been. I'm a huge fan of the original version of "Fright Night", and of the television movie that inspired that, the 1972 ABC Movie of the Week, "The Night Stalker", which starred Darren McGavin, Simon Oakland, and Ralph Meeker, Carol Linley, and Barry Atwater. I was hoping that "The Shed" would be at least comparable. Unfortunately, it was not. The first ten minutes of "The Shed" are actually pretty good. It's downhill from there, I'm afraid. The acting wasn't terrible, and the special effects were pretty decent. The creative team behind the movie played it pretty fast and loose with traditional cinema vampire lore, however. Humans are turned into full-fledged vampires within minutes of having been bitten, and by minutes, I mean two or three. "The Shed" borrows heavily from "Fright Night", sometimes successfully, sometimes not so successfully. There are the usual jump scares, dreams within dreams, yadda yadda yadda, blah blah blah. The protagonist takes actions that make absolutely no sense whatsoever. In one scene, he believes that someone has broken into his house, and he ventures out to see if this is the case. Mind you, he has just experienced his pet German Shepherd and his grandfather brutally murdered by something monstrous in the shed on his property earlier that same day... and he takes absolutely ZERO steps or measures to arm or protect himself before investigating this possible prowler that night. There are the usual array of kitchen knives, a shotgun, a baseball bat and an axe, and he takes none of these. He wanders the house, in the dark, unarmed, afraid that whatever was in the shed has now gotten into the house. It just doesn't make sense. I understand that it's a customary trope in horror movies for characters to do stupid things that no person in their right mind would do under the same circumstances, but it's a trope that I have really grown sick and tired of. For example, the beastie in the shead rips apart a healthy, full grown German Shepherd, and Grandpa goes in for revenge, armed with a stick that is significantly smaller than the cane that he usually carries. Again, there is a shotgun in the house, as well as a baseball bat, and an axe, and grizzled, hard-bitten, combat veteran Grandpa opts for a two foot long stick. I won't give away much more than I already have, save to say that the ending is a near copy of the conclusion of "Fright Night".

I believe this must be the first feature for this writer and director so they will continue to grow and learn and get better from this. The lead actor was great and they scored with him, he is from Death Note. The script is slow at times, very cliche and not really current with 2019 and how teenagers act. More like teenagers in the 1990s or 80s. Things are different now. If they had based the story in the 90s that would have worked better. I thought the makeup in the climax scene was very cool.

Don't know what the hell some of these reviewers are talking about.I thought it was a very enjoyable movie .Had an 80's vibe about it which i thought was cool.I loved it its a vampire movie for petes sake its not shakespeare.

No! This is not a great movie. An overly heavy reliance on jump scare dream sequences (4 in total) shoddily edited and badly acted and with plot holes larger than the pores of a teenager.. BUT if you were to look at it differently, and in light of recent mass shootings. This can be viewed as as a movie about the effect of systemic bullying and how it affects individuals. Like this movie, it ain't pretty! The premise had promise but wasted it. But the theme of bullying was evident. The bullies do tend to lash out, and sadly not always as fictional vampires