Skinwalkers (2006) – Good Wolves and Bad … Really?

Skinwalkers (2006) directed by James Isaac stars Rhona Mitra (Rachel Talbot), Matthew Knight (Timothy), Elias Koteas (Jonas), Jason Behr (Varek), Kim Coates (Zo), Natassia Malthe (Sonja), Rogue Johnston (Grenier), Sarah Carter (Katherine), Barbara Gordon (Nana), Lyriq Bent (Doak) and Tom Jackson (Will).

There’s a prophecy (isn’t there always?) that a boy will be born who holds the mythical cure to the curse. On his thirteenth birthday the moon will go blood red for three nights and then it will all be over. Unbeknownst to his mother, Rachel, young Timothy is that boy. The small town they live in is aware of this, and they protect mother and son from the opposing forces that come in the shape of Varek and his pack: Zo, Sonya and Grenier.

This is actually a werewolf movie, hence the title Skinwalkers, though those two beasts are not necessarily synonymous. The plot is fairly straight forward. The good werewolves want to be cured from the curse and they don’t eat people. The bad werewolves want to keep going and they do eat people. The twist there is that once you eat human flesh you get corrupted to the wild side.

The basic premise is pretty thin, but it could work, given that it turns out the leader of the bad wolves, Varek, is actually the brother of the leader of the good wolves, Jonas, as well as the father of the boy he’s looking to kill and the husband of Rachel, so we get a little free Cain-and-Abel action thrown in. So the big question is: with all this, and snarling fights, and guns and knives and fisticuffs and elongated canines… why doesn’t it work?

I like werewolves. I like the idea of the Id run wild, the beast within, and I generally enjoy the working class nature of them. The problem here is that this turns into a shoot-out a few too many times and there’s not enough wolf in these wolves to satisfy me, personally. There’s blood and meat galore, a noble quest and an evil villain, but there’s still next to no dramatic tension. I’ve said before that for these kinds of movies it helps if the actors play it straight, taking their roles seriously. The actors of all this seem to do that, but there’s just not enough meat on the bone and sometimes that just makes the acting… bad. The end result is surprisingly bland and run-of-the-mill pulp horror clichées, though there’s certainly enough sex and violence to satisfy the Id-side of the myth. The actual transformed werewolves don’t really work for me either. There is a reason, beyond the influence of the moon, as to why we never get to see them in direct light.

There is a complete and total lack of pack dynamic to the interaction between the two werewolf cadres that leaves me mystified. Most werewolves on screen travel alone, so there could have been something there to explore, but there’s hardly even any regular interpersonal dynamic and that’s just too bad. The bad guys are traveling on motorcycle, so we could at least have had a little “bad to the bone” moment with all the leather and cut off denim they’re wearing, but instead they come across as four posers who can’t remember weather or not they’ve already racked their shotguns.

The most incredibly stupid plot twist occurs at the very end, though, when the cheap Sarah Connor rip-off Rachel forgives and forgets everything the redeemed and delivered Varek has done in order to travel with him and use their sons blood to cure werewolves any- and everywhere. It’s one of those moments when you have to curb your instinct to throw popcorn at the screen and let out a howl of your own. There are so many things wrong with that notion that I actually won’t bother ranting about it, it’s that bad.

Exposition is generally pretty insulting to this viewer, but even more insulting is superimposing the images of the actors over the transformed werewolves in case you can’t figure out who is who. Again, I have to rein in the impulse to hurl popcorn at the screen. All in all, this is not worth wasting your time on if you want good quality growl for your buck.

Article first published as Movie Review Skinwalkers on Blogcritics.

Stake Land Review

Just to change things up a little…

My latest review of the vampire movie Stake Land (2010) by Jim Mickle can be found and read at Cinema Sentries.

Check it out here:

http://cinemasentries.com/

Teaser:

In a parallel and immediate now, disaster strikes and a pandemic hits the world. Vampires take over, for any given value of that when they actually don’t retain any higher brain function other than the basic predator-feeding instinct. That does not mean they are not extremely dangerous, because they certainly are.

Mule

Pandorum (2009) – In Space No One Can Hear You… No, Wait, Wrong Movie

Article first published as Movie Review: Pandorum- In Space No One Can Hear You… No, Wait, Wrong Movie on Blogcritics.

In Pandorum (2009) Bower (Ben Foster) one of the crew members of the Elysium wakes up from his hypersleep only to find that the ship does not seem to be in very good shape. There are no lights, no other crew and no welcoming committee. The initial scene is surprisingly painful to watch, more like a birth than a peaceful awakening. It is clear that Bower does not remember where he is, or why, but all his technical knowledge and his mission specific skills are intact. Shortly after Bower’s awakening another crew member, Payton (Dennis Quaid) wakes up to the same confusion.

They set about trying to contact their superiors, figuring out where they are and what’s gone wrong with the ship. It’s not as easy as it seems.
Elysium is overrun with vaguely humanoid carnivores that may have started out human, but have now evolved into something more primal. They hunt in packs and they more or less have the run of the ship. Their favoured prey is the newly awoken crew members that emerge from their sleeping pods and summarily get eaten. There are still bigger problems, though. First of all, the reactor is acting up and needs to be manually restarted. Secondly, the ship has received a transmission that Earth is done, gone and over, and the ships crew is all there is left of mankind. Thirdly, there’s a space sickness called Pandorum which affects those that have been in suspended animation for too long. Or those that have been in space for too long. It starts as the shakes and graduates into full-blown paranoia and violent tendencies.

Elysium was on its way to Tanis, the only habitable planet in reasonable reach, when it launched and now there’s literally no way of telling where she is or if she’s just lost in deep space. Bower sets out for the bridge to try and open the door to the room he and Payton find themselves in when they wake up. The monsters roaming the hallways try to eat Bower a couple of times until he forms a tentative alliance with Nadia (Antje Traue) and Manh (Cung Le) a couple of crew members that have been awake for a while and managed to stay alive. Restarting the reactor becomes a more pressing matter half-way through this little jaunt.

In the end it turns out things are even more complicated than that, of course. The maneaters are probably a result of genetic enhancement meant to help the crew in their biological transition to their new home planet. The ship is run by a madman, one of the officers present when Earth’s last transmission was received, and a victim of Pandorum. Or maybe just megalomania, who knows? The ship is where it was supposed to be and not where is was supposed to be at the same time, meanwhile; this viewer is mostly going “huh?”at this point.

The environment is atmospheric, I will give it that. The mise-en-scene is darkly gorgeous. I like The Elysium, in all it’s gloomy, overrun, beleaguered and begrimed glory. It’s not one of those pristine, white and shiny ships, which I like. There’s an impressive sense of scale to it, too, without it losing its claustrophobia. The monsters mostly leave me indifferent. They’re fast and vicious, but the actual hunting and fighting feels a little too much like a computer game for me to invest too much in it. You can probably argue that gravity is different on board a spaceship, but still.

Both Ben Foster’s and Dennis Quaid’s performances are surprisingly layered and played straight, which definitely lends this the gravitas it needs not to descend into complete pulp fiction. The movie is ambitious, but maybe that is part of the problem. It wants to scare the viewer with dark things hunting the hero through long, dimly lit corridors, supply a creeping psychological horror and question the way memory works and the effects of long distance space travel. It’s a veritable cornucopia of fears to tap into, claustrophobia, loneliness, alienation, memory loss, fear of the dark and the things in the dark that can eat you, what we are reduced to when pushed to extremes, cannibalism… The overall effect is surprisingly un-frightening, though. There are better movies in this genre, like the Alien-movies, Solaris, Sunshine, 2001: A Space Odyssey just to mention a few obvious ones.
This is still good enough to merit a viewing, but it isn’t all it could have been if it had sharpened its focus a little and not tried to overreach itself.

Pandorum (2009) directed by Christian Alvart stars Ben Foster (Bower), Dennis Quaid (Payton), Cam Gigandet (Gallo), Antje Traue (Nadia), Cung Le (Manh), Eddie Rouse (Leland), Norman Reedus (Shephard), André Hennicke (Hunter Leader), Friederike Kempter (Evalon), Niels-Bruno Schmidt (Officer).