SCREAM ALL NIGHT

A legally emancipated teen confronts derelict family dynamics, hoping for closure from a terrible childhood at a B-movie studio: Cue zombies and killer cauliflower.

Some kids come from broken homes. Seventeen-year-old Dario Heyward comes from Moldavia, a broken horror film studio. The mere thought of his peculiar 30-something brother, institutionalized mother, and abusive director father gives him hives. Despite this dermal aversion, he returns home for the live (yes, live) burial of 91-year-old dad. When the will names Dario as studio chief, he is forced to consider delaying Harvard while he evaluates his family legacy. Heavy-handed in its dark flourishes, Dario’s first-person narrative avoids being lachrymose and lands somewhere both self-aware of the surrounding silliness and respectful in matters of mental illness and abuse. Moldavia is resplendent with wonderfully wacky details, characters and settings, but the gothic gets rococo-heavy with the weight of so many references to both real and imagined films and know-it-all filmmaking insights. Most characters are presumed white, but there is a diversity in age and socio-economic status. The number of Dario’s conflicts gets clunky: past demons, long-lost mother, loss of innocence, dealing with an abuser, fearing mental illness, sibling rivalry, finding one’s footing in the family business, academic aspirations, and burgeoning love.

A decent descent into the mad world of an imagined film studio with plenty of gory details to delight creature-feature and horror movie buffs.