Craving never truly convinces and certainly doesn’t do the special effects team justice. What should be an easy home run of a film meanders and drags itself to a wonderfully gruesome finale.

On a quiet night in a rural bar, the regulars are disturbed when a group of drug addicts besiege them. The people with an addiction are running from another dangerous group that traps everyone inside. The mysterious trappers alert the two groups inside that as withdrawal starts to set in, one of the addict’s secrets will be revealed, which threatens to destroy them all.

The main question you ask yourself while watching Craving is if the previous hour of tensionless guff with only a smattering of decent effects to keep us interested is worth sitting through to enjoy that last 15 minutes of unmitigated practical effects horror goodness. It’s a serious tough one, really. However, the answer is still… Maybe? Craving is a hard film to pin your enjoyment on, and even after two watches, it is difficult to pin your opinion on what side you would go with.

What should be a tension-fraught film that has you at the edge of your seat ends up being a static, meandering, docile viewing experience. We have a decent concept here, but the film never gets out of first gear to invest you. There should be a lot of angst between the two groups trapped inside the bar together, but there just isn’t. Multiple characters look actively and are always disinterested, even in the finale. When we find out one amongst the drug group might be something dangerous, the tension never amps up. No paranoia, nothing. It’s just all so drab, and no matter how much Giallo lighting will fix it.

By the time Horton is throwing constant flashbacks our way, we are disengaged entirely. When trying to build fear in a situation like Craving, Going off to multiple flashbacks for each member of the drug group just to build up their characters a bit with no payoff doesn’t work. For one, there are just too many characters in Craving. That is before you even count the people who have trapped the two other groups inside. This isn’t helped by there being just far too many characters to keep track of, as some do nothing for an age. You have to remind yourself what their relationship is to the rest of the groups.

When the madness starts, and our monster reveals itself, the fantastic gore work from Bravo FX is almost negated by how Horton blocks everyone. All but one character correctly tries to hide. So, in between kills, we are just seeing characters crying in place. Barely anyone tries even to escape this horrific moment. Two characters who looked like badasses just hold each other for a bit. It’s just so underwhelming that the film never capitalises on even this finale. There is no fear for the characters, nothing. We expect them to die and can’t even fully enjoy seeing them get torn apart because of how it was shot.

Now that the final act gore is tremendous, the efforts put in to make each death unique is great, and it is the true and only saving grace to Craving. Does it save the film? Not quite, but it certainly makes watching it more accessible to swallow. Craving doesn’t do their work justice, and it is a true shame, as their work alone deserves something great.

★★

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