Let me start right off the bat by saying that I would rather have Anne Coulter put her dick in my mouth than watch another After Dark film.
I’m not joking. I’m DEAD FUCKING SERIOUS. If it boiled down to a choice between that and watching another lame-ass horror movie that the director of DUNGEONS & DRAGONS thought was a good idea? I’m takin’ a conservative She-Rod in the mouth. Good God Almighty she’d even have CHANGE coming back to her.
First came the lukewarm THE ABANDONED (Read Review Here), then the Godawful CAPTIVITY (Read Review Here) and now I have SKINWALKERS to contend with. If this flick didn’t have decent looking werewolves, I wouldn’t have given it a star rating because, well, it doesn’t even resemble a film in the slightest. Thank you, Stan Winston, and what the fuck are you DOING here?
Welcome to Huguenot, Minnesota, where the grannies pack heat and it just looks like it’s doused with a thin layer of Robitussin. Evil werewolves (led by the dude from that show ROSWELL) and good werewolves (led by an embarrassed looking Elias Koteas) fight over the life of a twelve-year-old boy, who will lift the werewolf curse at midnight on his thirteenth birthday. I’m always wary of curses that are lifted at midnight… Are they time zone specific?
But nevermind that. This is a WEREWOLF MOVIE! And to me, nothing says “werewolf” quite like… Poorly edited shootouts? WHAT THE FUCK?
Yes, that’s all that SKINWALKERS boils down to. Screw a horror movie company releasing what they’re MARKETING as a horror movie and giving us a broke-as-fuck action movie. And with Jason Bourne just down the hall. I’m actually ashamed to be paying for this shit. If I wasn’t convinced After Dark was a fraud BEFORE? I am now.
But if it were a little more energetic and willing to have a little fun at its own expense, this might have worked. The first shootout features the boy and his Grandma walking down the street with a purse over her arm when The Dude from ROSWELL sees them. And he’s all like “I’M THE DUDE FROM ROSWELL! SEE THE GHOST OF CAREERS PAST AND DESPAIR!” And how does Grandma react?
She pulls a .357 Magnum out of her purse. Do you know how heavy and bulky one of those Goddamn things are? Her purse looked kinda uncluttered, and she pulls a Goddamned HAND-CANNON out of her purse. Then she takes the boy to the side and pulls out… ANOTHER .357!
It’s a shame that the movie doesn’t think this is as funny as I do. God, ROSWELL wasn’t THAT bad…
The acting is dismal, which is weird because not only is Elias Koteas in it, but fuckin’ KIM COATES is in it as well, who is another one of the best character actors in the business. Not only do they not give Coates anything to do, but they labor Koteas with some of the worst Obi-Wan Kenobi lines one is capable to write. And to see him in this movie is to see a proud actor retreat like a turtle hiding in his shell. I’d admonish him, but even Olivier wouldn’t have made it out of SKINWALKERS alive.
SKINWALKERS is directed by Jim Isaac, who did JASON X. Those of you who liked JASON X? There is nothing for you to see here. Those of you, like me, who couldn’t stand JASON X? You’re seeing something else anyway.
And for some strange reason, they listed the writers RIGHT AFTER the opening title. No cast. No director credit. It’s an opening expository scrawl, four company credits, then the title, then “WRITTEN BY JAMES DEMONACO & TODD HARTHAN & JAMES RODAY.” I figure that since they won’t be writing for a project of this high a profile for quite a while after THIS piece of shit, I guess they insisted on going first.
I like writing here, but there are times when it just sucks ass. Times like today, for example, where it’s like Dr. WIL and TV’s Molly try to break my will by flinging one ass-awful movie at me after another. By and large the days are good. Like the days I saw RAPID EYE MOVEMENT (Read Review Here) and SEVERANCE.
But oh, the nights are so long…
½* out of 4
Read all of Dr. Royce Clemens reviews in his Archives
