Come Play

Come Play (2020) is Jacob Chase's horror film, available to watch online on iFILM. Oliver, a withdrawn autistic boy, meets the world mostly through his tablet and phone. One evening a children's storybook loads itself on the screen, telling of a lonely creature named Larry who is looking for a friend.

Larry wants Oliver for himself, and he means to pull the boy through. The longer a screen stays lit, the closer the thing creeps from its side into ours — first as a glare, then a shadow, then a hand under the blanket. Oliver's parents, played by Gillian Jacobs and John Gallagher Jr., chalk it all up to their son's anxiety until glitching devices and marks on the wall point to one answer: something is living behind the glass. Saving him means cutting off the very thing that gave him comfort.

The feature grew out of Chase's short film "Larry" and runs on one clean, nasty premise: the monster lives in the device the kid can't put down. There are jump scares, but the quieter dread is about a screen standing in for human contact. A solid late-night creature feature for anyone who likes a monster that plays by rules. Stream Come Play (2020) online on iFILM.