Yes, there is a movie called Marshmallow. It is a horror movie with science fiction elements. It is not about the Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man, nor any other marshmallow creatures. There is not a character named Marshmallow. Frankly, I do not know why it’s called Marshmallow at all, outside of the fact that it takes place in a summer camp setting where many are likely to be consumed. I guess the fact that it has so little to do with anything makes the title less forgettable.

Pros

Kid actors do a decent job
Funny lines and moments
Interesting concepts tied to the reveal
Only 93 minutes

Cons

Lacks tension and pacing
Somewhat predictable
World-building falls apart by the end when the big reveal happens

Plot & Thoughts

Morgan (Kue Lawrence) is a shy kid who is struggling to make friends since he moved with his parents. He’s not too thrilled that his parents have signed him up for summer camp either. His grandfather (Corbin Bernson) tries to convince him of the fun he might have, but he passes away suddenly, making Morgan even more depressed. Unfortunately for Morgan, the kids who are mean to him on a regular basis are also at camp with him. Some of the counsellors seem interested in making sure all the kids have a good time, but there are some who are the usual self-absorbed, sex-crazed jerks. Morgan manages to make a few friends at camp, but after a night in which a spooky story is told about a psychotic surgeon who lived nearby, he starts to see and hear things and question if it was just a scary ghost story or if there’s some truth to it.

Marshmallow is a relatively straightforward movie that is held together by a few key factors. Aside from the twist reveal and the occasional moments of violence or sex, it feels like a story that would fit right in as an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark? or The Twilight Zone. It’s mostly a ghost story with some adolescent angst and bully plot lines thrown in. It’s primarily told from Morgan’s perspective, so it relies on the performance of the young cast, who all do a pretty good job of carrying the film. There are a few standout performances with some funny lines here and there. Their acting, however, is not enough to improve the movie’s pacing and tension issues, which makes Marshmallow drag in the first two acts.

Unfortunately, there’s not much else I can say about Marshmallow without getting into spoilers. The reason I’m inclined to bring up the spoilers is that the big revelation of the story reshapes the entire narrative of the movie’s setting and plot. It’s an interesting concept that is, unfortunately, also not a fully realized idea because it just raises a lot of logistical questions. So if you’re trying to avoid spoilers, stop reading.

In the third act, it’s revealed that the ghostly doctor Morgan has been seeing and running from is just a member of the camp staff in a costume intended to scare any kids who might stumble into an area in which they don’t belong. More importantly, this summer camp is not a normal one with fake ghosts. It’s actually a place where special children go during the summer to make their lives more real upon their return home. The real surprise of Marshmallow and what pushes it into the sci-fi category is that the kids are all robots with the consciousnesses of children who had died; parents who couldn’t deal with the loss of their child got a robot to replace them. In order for the child not to suddenly realize they aren’t aging and so forth, the summer camp was set up as a front for a robot maintenance facility that would alter and adjust their height, age, appearance, etc. over the course of the summer by performing operations on each of them individually while they were asleep.

It’s an interesting idea and a twist for a movie that is mostly unremarkable otherwise. Unfortunately, if you think about it at all, certain questions start to form about the nature of the technology that’s involved, how ubiquitously known the technology might be to the general public, what happens to the robots when they reach “adulthood,” and so on. When it’s revealed in the final scene how a defective consciousness could turn violent, it also made me wonder why there wasn’t a better security presence or security measures in place beyond some schmucks in camp outfits. For as interesting and impactful a twist Marshmallow has, it’s one that also causes a lot of issues with its world-building. At least it only introduced its concept at the end, instead of in the first act, like Companion, so I wasn’t distracted with such questions the whole time I watched it.

TL;DR

Marshmallow is a small, simple movie that doesn’t do much special until the last act. It’s not a bad film, but it’s also not the most interesting story about a shy kid at summer camp struggling to fit in and being afraid of ghost stories. Aside from its big revelation at the end, which causes some world-building issues, it’s mostly unremarkable. Still, it’s less than two hours long, so you could do far worse with your time.

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