Movie Review: THE LIZZIE BORDEN GAME

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: August 1st, 2025 / 08:15 PM

THE LIZZIE BORDEN GAME movie poster | ©2025 Breaking Glass Pictures

Rating: Not Rated
Stars: Airisa Durand, Jason Brooks, Naomi, Charlie Dae, Steve Larkin, Chynna Shurts, Laura Ellen Wilson
Writer: Calvin Morie McCarthy
Director: Calvin Morie McCarthy
Distributor: Breaking Glass Pictures
Release Date: August 1, 2025 (digital)

THE LIZZIE BORDEN GAME is a riff on the BLOODY MARY/CANDYMAN-style invocation of a spirit, achieved by chanting into a mirror. In this case, the familiar rhyme about Lizzie Borden, accused and then acquitted of killing her father and stepmother with an axe, provides the ritual words.

After two young sisters unfortunately play the game and get the exact result you’d expect, three months later, Emily (Airisa Durand) is reading about the children still being missing in the newspaper. Her cousin Shelby (Charlie Dae) has invited Emily along on a “Friendsgiving” vacation, along with Shelby’s partner Kyle (Jason Brooks) and Shelby’s English pals Rupert (Steve Larkin) and Amelia (Laura Ellen Wilson).

Emily’s parents died in an accident several months ago, and Shelby is worried for her. Even so, Shelby snaps at Emily for reminding her that they used to play the Lizzie Borden game in their shared childhood.

Emily, Shelby and Kyle meet up with Rupert and Amelia at a gigantic house in the woods, far away from civilization. Kyle and Rupert almost immediately get roaring drunk, and when the Lizzie Borden game comes up in conversation, Rupert insists that they play it.

Despite Kyle’s reminder that the game needs to be firmly ended (like saying “goodbye” at the end of a Ouija board session), unnerving images in the mirror freak everybody out so much that Emily is the only one who wants to bring the ceremony to its proper conclusion. The others flee the room, then insist that they didn’t really see anything and ignore Emily’s pleas to utter the concluding chant.

It’s not too hard to guess where this is heading, and it gets there.

On the plus side, writer/director Calvin Morie McCarthy has a decent setting, some good jump scares, and effective gore. He also has Chynna Shurts, who gives an enthusiastically creepy performance as the blade-wielding ghost.

But THE LIZZIE BORDEN GAME is so full of improbable behavior that it’s hard to get behind it. Shelby has such an initial bad reaction to discussion of the game that we wait for some revelation about this, only to see she’s fine with playing it later. Since Shelby is Emily’s cousin, it seems a little peculiar that she never expresses any feelings of her own about the loss of her aunt and uncle.

Perhaps most crucially, since Shelby and Kyle profess so much sympathy for Emily’s state of mind, why not placate her by uttering the phrase that will end the game?

THE LIZZIE BORDEN GAME is okay on a let’s-watch-a-ghost-story level, but its most memorable aspect is Shurts, whose insane smile produces actual chills.

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