Literally halve of this movie is build up. It builds up to the moment of the first killing by the movie its monstrous character. Thing is that the build up is actually way better than the disappointing second halve of the movie. It makes "Pumpkinhead" a very uneven genre movie, that still has got a good reputation due to Stan Winston's involvement.
The movie proofs though that directing is an craft on its own. Sure you can be Stan Winston and have created some of the worlds best known and best looking monsters and creatures but that doesn't mean you can direct a good genre movie as well.
The movie itself basically has all of the right required genre ingredients in it. A monster, a revenge plot, a couple of teenagers, some other odd creepy looking folks, dark settings and whatever more you can expect from a genre movie such as this one. The movie handles all of its ingredients well in its first halve, when the movie is still more of a moody and mysterious one but in the second halve it just relies too much on its monster, the killings and its gore. It was real disappointing and I literally lost interest in this movie during its second halve.
This is also due to the fact that you just don't care much for the teenagers within this movie and you can't even tell who is who, not even after a while, since the characters remain mostly cardboard ones and they are not being handled and develop properly within the movie.
Still the movie has Lance Lance Henriksen in it though, even from the time when he was still a quite big actor and didn't had the reputation for starring mostly in B-junk. His presence adds quite a lot and the movie truly benefits from it.
Like you would expect from a movie to which Stan Winston was involved with, it's a good looking movie, with good effects and make-up. Also a problem perhaps though is that it features its effects and monster too prominently. Due to this the horror of the movie simply doesn't work out effectively at all.
Not completely unwatchable but the second halve of the movie still ruins a lot.
5/10
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