Famed horror author Raymond Castle (Tom Cikoski) has died. His daughter Jasmin (Jasmin Flores) heads home to clean up his affairs and try to unravel the mystery of his unexpected death. When she arrives home she is faced with memories she wasn’t ready to remember – and horrors she wasn’t prepared to see in the real world. As Jasmin hacks her way into Raymond’s computer she finds his final unfinished project, which we see through a series of shorts, narrated by Raymond’s cheesy horror-humor. It might not just be an unfinished and forgotten project, though – as the stories unfold, they come to life in Jasmin’s real life – and the suspicion of black magic becomes all too real.

Unfortunately, this seemingly brilliant concept doesn’t deliver in terms of product. A gross-out fest, filled with mediocre makeup effects and more vomit than you could ever bear to witness  in one sitting, Monsters in the Closet is not a credit to its genre. The stories are woven together with a barely-there throughline including the typically macho book publisher, his mousy assistant, and their desperate, greedy need to get their hands on Castle’s final chapter. There’s a weak attempt at backstory, which also tries to explain away the fact that Raymond was an old white man and Jasmin is a Latina woman – with a completely non-ignorable accent. It seems this story stems more from what the filmmakers couldn’t do than what they could.

Not all the stories are bad – in fact, there’s potential for some of them to really stand out, but the actual product doesn’t live up to the concept. “Home Improvement”, a could-be-funny story of newlyweds slowly losing their minds while trying a brutal home renovation project is instead marred by mediocre acting (including one of the most inconsistent and embarrassing “South African” accents I’ve ever heard) and a total lack of viable gore effects. “Frankenstein’s Wife” is also clever, but is once again victim to terrible visual effects. Overall, the stories have room to grow but are seemingly halted by flat out BAD filmmaking.

It’s clear this is a super low budget, nearly “homemade” movie. The crew is excruciatingly small, and the multi-hyphenate creators, the Snygg Brothers, were clearly wearing far too many hats – and some of them were out of their wheelhouse (or their budget). It’s so hard to see these movies come across the transom – there’s so much potential, and I know that no one working behind the scenes was there for the wrong reason. Passion projects, as this clearly is, should have the magical universal good luck to always be… well… good. Alas, that is not the case with Monsters in the Closet. 

Monsters in the Closet is unfortunately for me, too much of a gross-out fest for enjoyable mindless re-watching, as some of these less-than-stellar films could be. However, if you don’t mind bizarre amounts of vomit, terrible corn syrup blood, and over-the-top unrealistic gore, ad-nauseum (no pun intended), be my guest. Otherwise, or if you’re a horror-lover with higher standards – don’t bother.

3 out of 10