Curse of Crom: The Legend of Halloween

"**_An American Halloween tale that gives you Goosebumps_** In a small town in northern Utah, a high school senior (Chelsea Jurkiewicz) is troubled by the tragedy of a cantankerous old neighbor. She and her friends soon discover that an ancient Irish entity is unleashed and they must stop it before midnight on Halloween. But how? “Curse of Crom: The Legend of Halloween” (2022) was based on a story by R.H. Grimly, who grew up on R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps, Wait Till Helen Comes, and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark with the goal of getting kids into reading and scare them while doing it. As such, this is kid-friendly in that there’s no sleaze or buckets of gore, but it’s definitely still an amusing Halloween-oriented horror flick with the required spooky staples, even frightening in a comic book way. Jurkiewicz works well as the protagonist, but she’s clearly years older than 17 (she was almost 23 during shooting and looked closer to 30). Blonde Monica Moore Smith is attractive as the amusing Stephanie while redhead Ariana Bagley is worth a mention as Georgia. On the other side of the gender spectrum, Tanner Gillman (Harvey) and Halem Medina (Steve) are effective as friends of the girls. The flick runs 1 hour, 32 minutes, and was shot in Utah. GRADE: B-"