Movie Review: The Leech (2022)
The Leech is a Christmas horror film written and directed by Eric Pennycoff. It stars Graham Skipper, Jeremy Gardner, Taylor Zaudtke, and Rigo Garay. Typically, we wouldn’t name so many cast members, but that is actually the entire cast. The film is about a priest named Father David (Graham Skipper) who is delivering a sermon at his church when he runs into Terry (Jeremy Gardner). Terry is a homeless man who is getting ghosted by his girlfriend Lexi (Taylor Zaudtke) and is down on his luck. David offers him a ride, but he reveals that he doesn’t have anywhere to go, so Father David reluctantly lets him stay for the night in hopes that he moves on in the morning. Unfortunately for David, that doesn’t happen, and instead, Lexi joins them the following day. David can’t turn a child of God away, so she also stays there with them.
David has already had to put up with some of Terry’s less-than-desirable antics before Lexi arrives, but it just gets worse from there. They are playing loud music, drinking, doing drugs, and partaking in a lot of other godless acts. David does his best to maintain his holy presence, but it starts unraveling as he doesn’t seem to know how to deal with the situation, and he even slips up a bit and indulges himself with things he definitely shouldn’t be as a man of the cloth. As you can probably imagine, things definitely get out of hand, and he slips further and further into madness. Father David does have one friend at the church, Rigo, but he also gets tangled up in the mess that is Father David’s house, and that doesn’t end well.
This film does a lot with what they were working with. A cast of four people and a small crew managed to make a really solid Christmas horror film. Even if it wasn’t Christmas-themed, there is a lot to like here. The acting was great, the story was solid, and nothing really stood out as being out of place. It reminded us a lot of like a home Christmas version of The Shining. Throughout the film, you get to watch these characters spiral out of control until it reaches a boiling point, and then several more boiling points.
Overall, we would definitely recommend this to any horror fans looking to add something to their Christmas horror watch list for the holiday season, or just fans of solid indie horror. There is a lot to appreciate here, wrapped up in a dark small package.
The Leech was just released on VOD on Tuesday, December 6th, 2022, and is available from Arrow Films. Check out the trailer below, and be sure to give it a watch this holiday season!
