***Decent but prosaic TV horror with King Diamond as the monster (sort of)*** A 12 year-old girl is blamed for the death of a friend at a slumber party that was actually committed by a demonic entity called the Crooked Man. Six years later she returns to live with her dad, but the creature also returns to kill anyone in town who was at the slumber party. Angelique Rivera plays the protagonist, Cameron Jebo her rookie cop friend and Michael Jai White a man linked to the unleashing of the demon. Amber Benson is on hand as the mother of the original victim. “The Crooked Man” (2016) is marginally superior to contemporaneous SyFy flicks like "The Hollow," "The Night Before Halloween," "Neverknock" and “Stickman” because it’s not as half-baked and the gobbledygook makes more sense. Everything is taken seriously, which is good in my book, and the demon creature is certainly creepy. He curiously looks like a shaky, tall version of King Diamond in his top hat. Another positive is the inclusion of curvy Dia Frampton as Mia and petite cutie Alexis Wilkins as Alice. Meanwhile Angelique is serviceable as the heroine, but the story doesn’t build up enough drive to give it a higher grade. It’s well done for what it is, a TV horror flick, but it needed more oomph and imagination to pull it out of its run-of-the-mill state. The film runs 1 hour, 27 minutes and was shot in Southern Cal. GRADE: C+

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