Come Play is what happens when you hand the Slender Man your iPad, give him abandonment issues, and then ask him to co-parent a sensitive autistic child with two very tired millennials. Somehow, that’s a compliment.
Jacob Chase’s feature expands his short film Larry into a full-length bedtime story from hell—equal parts creature feature, family drama, and tech-age fairy tale about loneliness. And for a movie whose villain basically crawls out of a children’s e-book, it lands surprisingly hard in the feels.
Also, it will make you stare suspiciously at your tablet the next time it “mysteriously” opens an app by itself.
Larry, the World’s Saddest Digital Kidnapper
Let’s start with the main event: Larry.
Larry isn’t your typical horror monster. He’s not a vengeful ghost, or ancient demon, or your ex. He’s more like:
“What if a rejected Where the Wild Things Are character got trapped inside a cursed children’s story and gained Wi-Fi access?”
He lives in screens—phones, tablets, TVs—and appears through camera apps as a long-limbed, skeletal ghoul. But narratively, he’s not just there to harm; he’s there because he is desperately lonely.
His interactive storybook “Misunderstood Monsters” isn’t just exposition—it’s a sad little cry for help. Larry doesn’t want to haunt; he wants to hang. He just… sucks at consent.
That’s the clever thing: the film takes the horror cliché of “the monster wants the child” and reframes it as:
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Larry: terminally online friend-seeker
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Oliver: lonely autistic kid who actually needs connection
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The tablets: cursed friendship apps from the abyss
Larry is every “you up?” text that should have stayed unsent, but with dimensional travel and talons.
Oliver: An Autistic Protagonist Who’s Not a Plot Device
Azhy Robertson’s Oliver is the core of the film—non-verbal, autistic, misunderstood by peers, and overshadowed by the slow implosion of his parents’ marriage. He communicates through his tablet and phone, giving the story a neat emotional symmetry: the devices that connect him to the world are the same ones Larry uses to invade it.
The film, crucially, never treats Oliver’s autism as the horror. The horror is:
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The bullies
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The isolation
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The exhausted, fracturing parents who don’t always know how to show up
Oliver is not a magical savant, not an object lesson, not a prop. He’s a kid. Sometimes overwhelmed, sometimes scared, sometimes stubborn, and occasionally braver than all the adults. There’s a lovely moment when he finally meets Larry in the field near the end—and you realize that for Oliver, the temptation isn’t just supernatural, it’s emotional. For a lonely child, “a friend who never leaves” is a terrifyingly powerful offer.
Yes, the friend is a dimension-hopping corpse stick-man, but still. Tempting.
Mom, Dad, and the Joy of Co-Parenting with a Monster
Gillian Jacobs and John Gallagher Jr. bring real-life awkwardness to Sarah and Marty, Oliver’s parents. Their marriage is already damaged before Larry slithers into their router—Marty’s always working, Sarah’s constantly on edge, and Oliver’s needs demand energy they don’t always have in sync.
Instead of making them cartoonishly neglectful, the film leans into something much more real: they’re trying. They just keep failing in familiar, human ways.
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Sarah’s overprotective, frustrated, and clearly running on emotional fumes.
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Marty’s that well-meaning dad who thinks working more = caring more, but who physically isn’t there enough.
Larry doesn’t create their problems; he weaponizes them. He slinks into the gaps in their communication, turning every dropped call and misstep into another opening for his bony friendship agenda.
There’s real bite in the scenes where Sarah is accused of “overreacting” or being “crazy” about what she’s seeing—because we, the audience, know she’s right. The horror isn’t just Larry; it’s not being believed until it’s too late and your undead Wi-Fi ghoul is already holding your child by the ankles.
The Sleepover from Hell
The sleepover sequence is peak “this was a terrible idea, Sarah” cinema.
Trying to help Oliver socialize, Sarah invites the very boys who bully him over for a sleepover. If that sounds like a recipe for emotional disaster, don’t worry—Larry hears chaos and takes it as a party invite.
The boys find the tablet, read Larry’s story, the lights flicker, and suddenly:
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Larry appears through the camera
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One kid, Byron, gets attacked
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Everyone runs screaming
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Oliver gets blamed for… well, all of it, because of course he does
It’s one of the film’s best set pieces: a mix of kid-level terror, flickering lights, and the cruel logic of childhood social politics. The bullies don’t suddenly transform into saints—Byron, traumatized, eventually tells the truth and reconciles with Oliver in a way that feels earned, not Hallmark.
The movie’s message isn’t “bullies secretly love you”; it’s more like:
“Kids are messy. Some of them grow. Some of them suck. Also, there’s a monster with Wi-Fi.”
Larry Goes Mobile: Parking Garages and Static Terror
When Marty takes Oliver to his night-shift job at a parking lot, the film trades suburban spookiness for fluorescent liminal horror.
Larry’s story pops up on Marty’s phone—the man literally scrolls his way into a haunting. The way Larry travels through electricity and screens makes for some inventive visuals: buzzing lights, static-filled monitors, and that creeping dread that your phone is not just listening to you, but actively trying to ruin your life.
It’s also the moment Marty finally stops being the skeptical dad archetype and joins Team “Oh God, It’s Real.” Watching him see Larry lift Oliver off the ground is basically the parenting version of, “So… about all those times I thought you were overreacting.”
The Ending: Sacrifice, Eye Contact, and Ghost Wi-Fi
The emotional gut punch comes in the climax, out in the field.
Oliver is ready to go with Larry. He’s terrified, but also… seen. Larry’s the first being who has (in a twisted way) reached out to be his friend consistently. That’s what makes it so disturbing.
Just as he’s about to take Larry’s hand, Sarah jumps in and takes it instead.
She sacrifices herself, offering to be Larry’s friend so Oliver can stay. In that moment:
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Oliver looks his mother in the eyes for the first time
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She gets the connection she’s been begging for since his diagnosis
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And then she’s gone
It’s dark, tragic, and unexpectedly tender. Larry doesn’t cackle and drag her screaming into the void—this isn’t a “gotcha” death. It’s more like a cursed adoption. He wanted a friend; he got one. The fact she knowingly volunteered makes it feel like a reversed fairy tale: Mom follows the monster into the woods so her child doesn’t have to.
The epilogue sweetens the heartbreak without undoing it. Oliver now lives with Marty, who is fully engaged in his therapy and life. One night, the lights flicker again (because Larry respects thematic consistency), and through the tablet, Oliver and Marty see Sarah’s ghost happily playing with Oliver’s spirit-double.
She tells Oliver, “I will protect you.”
It’s weirdly comforting, in a “yes you’re dead but at least you’re good dead” kind of way.
Tech, Terror, and Tenderness
Come Play isn’t a perfect movie—some scares are familiar, some pacing a bit uneven—but it’s doing more than your average “evil app” horror.
It’s:
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A story about loneliness—human and monstrous
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A small-scale creature feature with big emotional stakes
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A rare horror film that treats an autistic child with empathy instead of cheap symbolism
Larry may be a spindly nightmare who crawls out of screens and ruins your electricity bill, but he’s also a strangely tragic figure: the ultimate “add me as a friend” request you should absolutely ignore.
In the end, Come Play is like one of those bedtime stories you definitely shouldn’t have read to your kid—but if you did, at least it might make them put the tablet down. And honestly, in 2020, that’s about as close to a public service as horror gets.
