Piper (2023) Review
Piper (2023) Review
Liz (Elizabeth Hurley) and her daughter Amy (Mia Jenkins) have relocated to a small town in Germany, but as they settle into their new life things start to take a dark turn… a local girl dies in horrifying circumstances and there are sinister events abound.
A dark secret from Liz’s past has awoken the Piper, an evil entity from beyond who seeks redemption by taking the children of any parent who has done wrong… and Mia is in grave danger. When Amy meets the kind and mysterious, Luca (Jack Stewart), could he be the key to saving her from the Piper’s clutches?
The latest from director Anthony Waller (MUTE WITNESS, AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN PARIS) is a dizzyingly frenetic affair, it never stops at any point, not even for a breather during the film’s soppier segments.
From the very beginning the viewer is bludgeoned with an opening sequence that could have benefited more from a more subdued pace as a mother and child drive at speed through a stormy night only for the Pied Piper of Hamelin and his abundant rats to coerce the youngster into a hanging.
We are then introduced to Liz (Hurley) and her daughter starting over anew in Hamelin, Liz as a teacher and her daughter as a pupil at a suitably Gothic location. In fact, the film’s locations (filmed in Riga, Latvia) and the exquisite cinematography are divine and a feast for the eyes. What a shame that what accompanies them is crammed with incident after incident squeezing the life out of any potential this tale might have had.
PIPER is loud, frenetic, and lacking in sense, for example after a Goth girl plummets to her death both Liz and her daughter natter away as if nothing more interesting than their morning’s post has arrived, really? It’s relentless, daft and bordering on hysterical, what PIPER never is, is good, which is a shame as there was such an interesting premise at its core.
The film is set for its world premiere at the seminal FrightFest 2023, on 27th August and gets its general release on 16 October 2023 from 101 Films.
TRAILER
