Macabre…ish Horror Review: Book of Monsters

Book of Monsters, 2018/ 1 hr 24 min

Sophie’s having her 18th birthday party and it’s expected to be a blow out…DJ, open bar, the works. She gets home to prep for the party with her friends to find her dear old dad has set up a little party for her and gifts Sophie her mother’s old tome, Book of Monsters. She’s afraid to take it because she has bad memories tied to it and the day her mother died. Dad later leaves and sets a curfew for her party.

Sophie and friends wait and no one is there, just when they thought no one would show, the teens roll in at 11 p.m., which sucks because her Dad says no later than midnight. Then the guests proceed to cause problems and make a mess. While Sophie’s running around trying to clean, someone throws beer in her face and laughs. Then a male stripper arrives compliments of the school bully.

Then a stranger arrives, dressed all in red and carrying a gift, she goes into Sophie’s room for a book and with her she takes a party guest who thinks he’s about to get lucky, only to find himself part of a ritual. The stranger in red carves a pentagram into his chest with her fingernails, then reveals herself to be a monster.

Once the ritual is done, the book closes and other monsters proceed to enter the house and kill the party guests. And it is gruesome, bodies are torn in half and body parts ripped off and eaten. Those who aren’t immediately killed and eaten, hide or run for it.

Soon the house floor is scattered with some kind of pupae and what comes out of them are heinous little garden gnomes that try to chew their way through everyone.

When the cops finally arrive, they are quickly killed and the car blown up. Jess decides to consult the book and finds all the monsters in there, drawings, their names and descriptions, among hundreds of monsters. And whether or not you should run or fight.

Then one of the guests is given the green light to open the gift brought by the woman in red. It’s an eerie picture of a house. An evil jinn leaps out of it into 2 other guests, Gary and Jess. But they need to get that spirit back into the picture and wrap it back up.

Inside The Book of Monsters is a map of the property, on it is ‘vault’ and Sophie has no idea what it means but with nothing to lose, they search for it and find more secrets, weapons, notes and pictures covering the walls and an audio recording of her mother, explaining things. Sophie has to face the darkness and fight.

This is a British comedy horror and it was entertaining but for as graphic and ‘gory’ as it was, there was very little blood. Blood was represented by what looked like silly string. The physical effects are of that of 90s comedy horror. There was something very Mighty Morphin Power Ranger of many of the monsters too. But then the were monsters and gore effects that were excellent! We have 2 different styles here. This is good for those who enjoy movies that make fun of gorefests and on the silly side.