Come Play (2020)

Come Play takes a modern anxiety we all understand—how our lives are tethered to glowing screens—and turns it into a smart, shivery bedtime story with real heart beating underneath the scares. Jacob Chase builds an atmosphere where every flicker of light and ping of a device feels ominous, but he never forgets that the movie’s true engine is a family trying to reach their nonverbal autistic son before something else does. The result is a horror-mystery that delivers crisp jump scares and a genuinely unsettling creature, while also treating Oliver’s loneliness with empathy instead of exploitation. It’s not the pick for viewers who want gore or a jokey, crowd-pleasing vibe, but if you like your horror tense, emotional, and eerily close to home, this one lingers after the screen goes dark.

Come Play wants to be a modern, screen-age bedtime horror story with a big heart, using a lonely child’s relationship with devices to turn everyday tech into something threatening. The problem is the execution is uneven: the premise is strong in a trailer, but stretched to feature length it leans on familiar jump scares and “lights flicker, something’s in the hallway” beats that rarely escalate into genuinely inventive terror. It also mixes heartfelt family drama and bullying themes with a fairly standard monster movie rhythm, so the tone can feel like it’s tugging in two directions. Still, the cast sells the emotional stakes and there are a few creepy images, but if you want consistently sharp scares or a truly fresh take on the phone/tablet concept, this may feel serviceable rather than memorable.