Review of Making Contact (1985) by Jonathan L — 26 Apr 2009

A magical, highly underrated and unique cult German supernatural horror fantasy drama modern fairy tale that is one of my favorite movies of all time since Junior High in the 90's. I saw this movie when I was 5 in 1986 in a theater in St. Louis and it scared the bejesus out of me even with that scary little bastard of a dummy. It's influenced by the movies of George Lucas with a bit of the stories of The Grimms Brothers and The Twilight Zone TV show as I always believe this is Roland Emmerich's best movie.

The story is about a 9 year old boy named Joey Collins played nicely by Joshua Morrell, he loves movies like Star Wars and E.T. as he has a big collection of the movie merchandise in his room and his dad just kicked the bucket. He lives in Virgina Beach City with his mother now in the suburbs near the beach, one night he gains telekinetic and psychic powers that enables him to make his toys including Star Wars figures come to life and even communicate with his dead dad on a toy Phone. However he becomes unpopular at school for the kids thinks he's crazy, one day he finds a creepy ventriloquist dummy in a old abandoned mansion that belong to a magician. He takes it home with him only to find it that is it possessed by a demon with powers like Joey's only stronger as it terrorizes the boy and threatens his mother, friends, enemies, teacher and city with demons from another dimension as the boy must end the madness.

It's a dark and not-too-sugar-coated modern fable with a nice edge of creepiness and some emotion with suprisingly good acting from Joshua Morrell and Eva Kryll. The dummy is the scariest one to hit the screen since Fats from Magic, it nicely uses some movie references in a playful non-spirited and non-sarcastic kind of way as this movie is really about the imagination of a 9 year old boy who dreams of living in his favorite movies like Star Wars and E.T. yet it brings out the child in anyone who had that same idea as a child to live out their favorite movies.The film is also about learning how to cope with death and learning about it and of course the power of the heart, it offers good lessons about life as well and I think it's far better then Emmerich's hollywood stuff.

A must see even on Youtube!