SKINWALKERS (2006) *
PG-13 (for intense sequences of violence and action, some sexual material and language)
1 hr. 50 min.
written by: Todd Jason, James DeMonaco & James Roday
produced by: Don Carmody & Dennis Beradi
directed by: James Isaac
Now here's a movie with no teeth that really bites. It's bad in a fun, laughable ways, and I'm not using "laughable" figuratively. I mean I literally laughed out loud at some of the things that happen in the film, things that were meant to be taken seriously. It's a "horror thriller" that is far from horrific and has less thriller than Michael Jackson (well, let's face it, Jackson has quite a horror thriller going for him all by himself). This film, deserves to be featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000 for so many reasons but even then many of the films on that show had some type of cult status. This one will never be a cult classic, in fact I don't know of any cult that would like it.
So, um, there are two groups of werewolves, the good ones who have assimilated into human society, hold down steady jobs in a small town (although you really only see them in this town. Huh?) and lock themselves up during the full moon so they don't hurt anyone; and the bad, sexy ones who roam the woods, cruise around in Sol-mo on their motorcycles and love devouring humans every chance they get. The bad ones, led by Garek (Jason Behr), are looking for a young boy who is the subject of an ancient prophecy involving a full red moon that could spell doom for them all.
It would been really cool if these bad wolfie's were trying to find this specific boy amongst several children. They could scour a playground or a school yard or even a day camp but that would make the plot too complicated, I suppose. Instead, we only get a simple and stupid plot and only one boy throughout the entire film. Right away we know this is the boy or we'd be pretty stupid, wouldn't we? So, his name is Tim (Matthew Knight), and he lives with his mother Rachel (Rhona Mithra) and her dead husband's brother, Jonas (Elias Kites) in a small town. Unbeknownst to any of these three (except maybe Jonas), Tim's daddy was a werewolf (you'd think his mother woulda known) and since she was normal, when Tim turns 13 in a few days, he'll have the ability to end "the curse" of the werewolves forever. How will this boy end this curse exactly? It's never revealed, thus we can care less what happens.
Since the bad guys enjoy their lycan-fastic life, it goes without saying that the want the boy dead. Meanwhile, Tim and his mom are clueless. They don't know any of this. They don't even know that Jonas and his entire family are the good werewolves, or as he likes to call them "skinwalkers". Fortunately for them, everyone else in the east coast town of Huegonot does and they all carry weapons just in case some bad wolfies happen to roll into town. Apparently, they've been expecting the bad guys to come looking for Tim -- which is why, when Varek and his gang do arrive, every person in town has a shotgun handy with which to engage in a shootout in the middle of Main Street. This includes Tim's nana (Barbara Gordon) who is actually the boy's first line of defense, I really wish I just made up.
Thus begins a battle between all the skinwalkers, good versus bad....well, at least between the small groups representing each side, anyway. There's not much indication that this "epic struggle" affects more than about 10 people, which makes the movie seem even more lightweight than it is. As soon as I saw that the climactic showdown occurs in an abandoned warehouse I just laughed even more. I mean come on, THE most cliched of showdown locales! It just proves that director
James Isaac ("Jason X") and his "trio of writers" weren't trying very hard here. Or maybe they were and their just really, really bad at what they do.
So, the movie's a dud. It's not the worst movie I've ever seen or of the year, for that matter. I wanted it to be good cuz I like Koteas and Mitra (both were in last year's "Shooter") and look forward to the roles they take. Maybe they just wanted to work on something dumb or could be that they liked filming in Canada. But in the end it wound up being something close to some bad horror film you'd see on Cinemax. It's silly and takes itself entirely too seriously (they shoulda focused on the mythical aspect of the actual term "skinwalkers" if they wanted to go that route) and it looks like it should have gone directly to DVD. Most bad movies are aggressively bad, irritating in some way or maybe even annoying. "Skinwalkers" isn't any of those, it's just dumb and predictable but it's certainly not dull.
Hot werewolf babes can't save this stinker.