Writer-producer-director Lawrence Fowler has been making evil plaything films in Wales (where life is cheap!) for a while now – including a trilogy of Jack in the Box pictures and Curse of the Witch’s Doll. He’s one of many busy British creatives who’ve racked up an oeuvre simply by sticking to it and getting films out there – and Grin is his most ambitious (if still small-scale) work to date. It’s a haunted ouija board picture, but the board is an elaborate puzzle box device which summons GRIN (Lucas Edwards), a well-designed demon avenger with a backstory as a jester who offended a prince.
After a prologue demonstrates what happens when folk with guilty secrets play with Grin, the film gets into an uncomfortable family reunion as American-raised Eva (Gareth Tidball) pitches up at the isolated new home of her currently sober alcoholic mother Agnes (Virginia Gilchrist) and her smiley new husband Lucien (Simon Davies) where she’s also going to be stuck with her obnoxious git brothers Ben (Luke Rodhri) and Joe (Samuel Lane). Eva is haunted by something which happened when they were children, though her conscience-free brothers resent it being brought up … which means that when the Grin box comes out and Lucien insists they play with it in a family bonding session, it’s a fair bet that killings (and smileyface carvings) will ruin the rest of the weekend.
Grin runs on familiar rails, though the specifics of the horrid secret take a while to emerge, but Tidball underplays effectively as the lone member of the family who apparently doesn’t deserve what’s coming to them all. Though he’s a jester, GRIN doesn’t do the comic schtick which has become tiresome since the Terrifier series got going – he just shows up and slashes.