Oliver (Come Play)

Oliver is a character in the American horror movie Come Play (2020).

Character creation
The story is based on director Jacob Chase's short film Larry, though the character of Oliver does not appear in this. Chase's wife works with autistic children, and arranged for actor Azhy Robertson to visit schools with autistic children, such as the Rebecca School. An autistic person who was nonverbal at Oliver's age looked over the script and gave feedback. Chase wanted to cast an autistic actor, but they ended up going for the non-autistic Robertson.

Biography
Oliver lives at home with his mother Sarah and father Marty. Sarah takes on most of the care for Oliver while Marty spends a lot of time working. At school, Oliver does not have any friends and is teased by other students. A paranormal entity called Larry starts coming after Oliver, claiming it wants to be his friend. At the same time, invites over some classmates for a sleepover - Byron, Mateo and Zach, who bullied him at school. Larry appears and tries to kill Byron, but the other kids blame it on Oliver. Byron is traumatized but later confesses what happened. It turns out that previously Byron and Oliver were good friends, but Oliver accidentally lashed out at Byron mom, so Sarah decided to break up the friendship.

Larry continues stalking Oliver and his family; after encounters with the creature, both his parents start to believe him. Oliver and his mom end up cornered by Larry, and though Oliver is ready to take Larry's hand and cross over to its world and become a similar creature, Sarah intervenes at the last moments and takes his place.

In the epilogue, Marty is shown to be taking over care for Oliver. One night, Marty hears noise downstairs and goes to check on them. He sees Oliver, and looking through his phone (the only way Larry could be seen), sees Sarah as well, playing with Oliver.

Autism
Oliver is stated to be autistic by one of his classmates. He is nonspeaking and uses an AAC app on a smartphone to communicate. He attends a regular school with a 1-on-1 aide. Additionally, he goes to see a speech-language pathologist to help develop his speech. His mom really hopes that Oliver will learn to speak in full, but the SPL cautions that he will likely only learn to speak a few words and sentences. In the epilogue, Oliver is shown to be speaking a few words ("mom loves me").

His mother explains that he is hyposensitive and thus needs to stim in ways such as wringing his hands or spinning in a circle. He also hums the SpongeBob theme song to calm himself down. Oliver is greatly interested in SpongeBob and constantly watches it on his phone. He also has multiple SpongeBob paraphernalia such as a stuffed animal and key chain. Larry leverages this by trying to lure Oliver in with a yellow sponge as a "peace offering".