Bezenby
This is going to come as a total surprise to you, but for the first time ever in a feature film a bunch of youngsters head off into the woods to get drunk, smoke weed, and 'make out' (whatever that is, I don't know what with me being a Benedictine monk). I was totally expecting them just to have a good time and then head home, but it turns out that there's some monster in the woods who then proceeds to hard sell the youth some unneeded double glazing, gets knocked back, then kills them all. Well, most of them.The cover of the DVD I picked up for fifty pence at an all monk car boot sale in Glasgow boasted of gore and nudity, and while it got one of them right (there's some boobs), the gore was mostly all off-screen, which is weird in these times when our horror hungry youth demands graphic torture scenes. There's some local rednecks involved too, one of the being Sid Haig, whom I've never seen in anything good.It's fine they had practical creature effects, but other than that you've seen this plot before many times. We were all disappointed back in the monastery and had to therefore entertain ourselves with the usual game of soggy biscuit.
Danii Disaster
No, seriously... if this movie was made in the 80s, you could, perhaps, excuse it to some extent, but it was produced in 2011, for Pete's sake!In this day and age, it is totally inexcusable to waste money on making this kind of crap! I would also complain about waste of talent, but none was involved -- not one of the cast members could pass for an actual actor.You could also bring up waste of effort, but that is also not applicable, since the movie is exceptionally poorly-written and badly-pieced-together.Sometimes you watch a movie and it makes no impression on you, so you forget it. But some movies are so BAD that you feel obligated to warn others. Well, this was one of those.Lame, wacky, dump. Basically, a TOTAL waste of time.
Ben Larson
This movie opens with a bang! The action keeps coming as it is just a short time until Lauren Schneider gives Sid Haig (Devil's Rejects, House of 1000 Corpses) - and us - an eyeful.Mehcad Brooks (Eggs from True Blood) is one tough mofo, and if anyone can survive and save his girl (Serinda Swan), it will be him. He manages to keep his head, while all others are losing theirs. Of course, I do not know how he has an unbroken bone in his body!A little girl on girl action (very little), and some brotherly love.Poor Beth (Amanda Fuller).
Anthony Pittore III (Shattered_Wake)
Over the past decade or so, so-called "creature features" have been a bit of a rarity. They were all the rage for decades, with some of the earliest dating back into the early 1900s with films like 'The Golem' and 'King Kong.' However, as times changed, so did tastes within the horror genre. Sure, every now & again, horror fans get treated to a more popular monster movie, but they very rarely ever make it to "the next level." Recently, there have been some more popular creature features like 'Cloverfield,' 'The Host,' and 'Feast,' but none of them really rebooted the trend. Now, a new creature feature, creatively titled 'Creature,' has been released by rookie writer/director Fred Andrews. Could it be the film that reignites the love for creature features? Eh, no. 'Creature' is yet another "backwoods" (or "back-swamp," I suppose) horror, which is a subgenre that has been getting a bit more focus over the past few years, probably due to the success of Adam Green's gorefest 'Hatchet,' from which Fred Andrews clearly "borrowed" plenty of inspiration. It stars a group of young actors that you may or may not recognize from random TV roles like Serinda Swan from 'Breakout Kings' or Aaron Hill from 'Greek' (in which he played a character called The Beaver. . . seriously). Anyway, the story focuses on this group of generic young people (that you'll forget as soon as the credits roll) as they make their way into the swamps of Louisiana. As they always do, the young people come across an impossible legend of a vicious monster that, of course, turns out to be the possible. Oh no. As the monster feasts on the pretty young people, horror veteran Sid Haig randomly appears to do what Sid Haig usually does: Look gross, add humour, and send a group of dumb kids to their deaths (yeah, he was basically an unpainted Captain Spaulding in this). Little tip for realism to Fred Andrews: If you're going to have Sid Haig playing a backwoods hick, don't have him wearing freshly pressed khakis. There are a certain few things that you should expect from the 70s/80s-style creature features. What are they? Stupidity, violence, gore, and nudity, right? Well, they're all here. So, if that's all you need, then check the film out, because from the first frame, you get to see a pasty, homely chick skinny dipping in a swamp you know is filled with leeches, gators, and hepatitis. What do you think happens next? Certainly not what happens any time someone goes skinny dipping in a horror film! In fact, any time you see any of those "horror movie moments" (going to get more beer, going to the bathroom alone, etc.) in this film, don't expect there to be much of a stray from PRECISELY what you'll expect.Now, how about that writing? Have you ever watched a movie or TV show and sat in awe thinking, "Wow! They talk exactly like me & my friends! It's like they copied my life!" This isn't like that. In fact, if you ever find yourself saying that the people in this movie sound like your group of friends, immediately go out and find new friends. The only line of dialogue in this film that actually holds any truth came from the previously mentioned Aaron Hill when he noted, "It doesn't get any cheesier than that." Just about sums this one up.But, hey, what importance do writing, originality, and acting have in a schlockfest? Absolutely nothing! There are really only two things that matter all that much: Creature FX and fun! And how can you ruin that? I don't really know, but somehow they did. The creature FX were lame, like a subpar ripoff of a bad Roger Corman flick. The main villain, Grimley, looked like Takka from 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.' They probably would've been more at home in a SyFy original than in a film that received a theatrical release (regardless of how short the release was). It's not as if this was a microbudget movie. They had $3 million here and couldn't produce better than the quality you see in the average film school project. Overall, 'Creature' can't even rise to the expected quality of the classic cheesy B-flicks we've come to love like 'Lake Placid' or 'Swamp Thing.' It's a poorly written, stalely directed, and lukewarm rendition of a story we've seen done much better dozens of times before. The only redeeming factor of the film is the scenery, but that isn't to compliment the filmmakers here. It's hard to film a Deep South swamp and not have it look cool. Final Verdict: 3.5/10. Avoid. I knew it'd be bad, but I didn't think it'd be boring. -AP3-
