Creature-review

Sid Haig as a villainous Southerner?  Surely, you jest.

            I had really vague hopes that maybe someone was attempting to remake the classic “The Creature from the Black Lagoon”.  I am not a big fan of that movie, and it wouldn’t be hard to replicate. Instead we get another movie that paints the South as full of inbreed psychopaths.  It’s really a shock that this movie came out in theaters.  The quality is like that of something you would watch on the Syfy channel. 

You are one, ugly, muthafucka.

            “Creature” begins with a bunch of kids driving through Louisiana on a trip to see the bayou.  On the way the driver tells the tale of Grimley, a man that was about to marry his sister, when a crocodile came and stole his sister-bride.  The man found and killed the croc and in his rage consumed the croc and then his sister.  He then became some bizarre amalgamation of crocodile and human.  I guess you are what you eat.  

            So they go camping near where Grimley supposedly lived to camp.  Are these sex-craved, geniuses of tomorrow going to enjoy a fun trip in the bayou? Or is there more to the legend?  In general the movie comes off like a joke.  There is a huge underlining theme of incest throughout the film.  The acting is weak. The script is full of holes and the dialogue makes you not give a shit whether characters live or die.  There is, however, a nice twist that I didn’t see coming, so I will give the movie credit for that.

I will hug her and kiss her and call her George.

            The weakest point of the movie is the shitty editing. This movie has some really weird choices of edits.  I know it’s independently made so the budget was probably low and they didn’t have a lot to work with. Still I expect a little bit of professionalism.  I should not have to ask; “What did they do to that character?”

They have a lot of kills and attacks that happen off screen just slightly.  So that means you get a close up of an actors face and no shot of what is actually happening to them.  It’s confusing and it takes away any fear you want to cause in a horror movie.  For example: a girl was tied to a chair and Sid Haig approaches her with a machete.  We get a close up of the girl’s face in pain screaming, and we hear some whacks and look at his face.  What the fuck did he do?  Well it’s not until later you see him walk off with one of her feet.  That is bullshit.

Daniel Tosh's clone doesn't dig spiders.

Aside from the editing, the acting, the script, and the overall mood I guess it could be a fun movie if you had a good crowd of people together and cocktails.  This is certainly not one that is worth a crap by itself.  Unless you are a schlock film hound I wouldn’t hunt it down to watch it.  It’s almost certainly doomed to be a creature feature on Syfy sometime soon.