Blobs of jelly, robots, bees, really really big worms . . . just when you thought Hollywood had turned everything it could into monsters there’s . . . splinters? Splinter-parasite-zombie things. So it’s the same old people-hiding-someplace-while-the-zombies-try-to-get-in-n-eat-them flick. With a few, I admit it (almost) original twists.
Like one of the three main characters is a biologist who slowly figures out--Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park / Independence Day style--enough about this highly implausible phenomenon to come up with a (highly implausible) plan. Involving ice and firecrackers. Which doesn’t work of course or the movie would only be 60 minutes of dreadful tension instead of 80.
What’s cool though is the biologist, his partner, and the escaped con who tried to kidnap them have to save themselves using just the stuff you’d find in a small, rural gas station store, because that’s where they’re holed up. Enter a screw driver, duct tape (of course), a box cutter, clothes hangers, and a chunk of cinderblock. Would a gas station store really sell digital oral thermometers and baseball bats? No matter, we Americans love to see common stuff get used, by crisis-inspired people, as survival tools and weapons. Wasn’t that part of what made The Fog fun to watch?
But what saves these trapped people in the end isn’t stuff. It’s that one ingredient any movie has to have to get any stars outta me > character development. Splinter’s badguy not only develops, he transforms. To the point of death, Christ-like. I guess that’s why you thought I might like this one, TAZ. But you should have told me don’t watch it alone.
BEST LINE - “It’s ok, we’re cutting your arm off.”
my rating system *=abysmal **=eh ***=cool ****way cool *****excellent
In its genre (horror) - ***not bad
In general - **eh (once I read TAZ'z I saw what he meant and wanted to up it one level, but didn't. u d-side)
