Kratt Review (2020) Worth Watching?

It’s about two kids who are visiting their grandmother who attempt to conjure a creature from folklore to do their daily chores, but this requires the sacrifice of a soul.

Kratt was written and directed by Rasmus Merivoo and stars his children, Nora Merivoo and Harri Merivoo, along with Mari Lill and Ivo Uukkivi amongst others.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

A folk horror in the vein of Rare Exports, The Hallow and Pyewacket.

This Estonian movie dives straight into the lore of its titular creature with a flashback to 1895, where someone has summoned a Kratt but has made the mistake of letting it fall idle. A Kratt needs to work or it will turn on its creator. We jump forward to the present where two kids, staying with their grandmother whilst there parents go on holiday, befriend twins living next door and between them summon the demon to do their chores. Things do not end well.

Kratt is a very fun movie which splices comedy with brief moments of gory horror to great effect. Whilst the more bloody moments are sparingly used, when they come, they burst on screen with almost alarming glee.

The cast is excellent here, the two real life siblings along with the two children playing the twins are wonderful, imbuing their characters with the grumpiness of a kid cut off from the internet along with the childish wonder and innocence of creating something that will do the things that they don’t want to do for them.

The adult cast is also on top form, the parents are harried and tired, the local governor is a bumbling fool but grandma is the star of the show, having the most of the comedy heavy lifting to do, Mari Lill playing homey lady and possessed demon marvellously and never dropping a beat.

The direction, cinematography, score and writing all work together to develop atmosphere and build a small town world which is being slowly destroyed by this creature. Delightful montages combined with scenes of character introductions and development really help invest you in the events unfolding.

There are a couple of issues, the pacing stumbles at times, particularly when we move to see what the parents are doing as these scenes are overlong, the comedy of the governor moves a little too close to farce and the fear some characters should have just doesn’t come across a heightened enough. There’s also a lot going on, there are multiple threads and messages that the film tries to put across, from family dynamics and relationships to ecological activism all with a message that is seemingly anti and then pro-technology, which makes things convoluted.

However, when a film is so gleeful and enjoyable as Kratt, it is very easy to look past this.