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Skinwalkers

Ahh Skinwalkers"¦ I wasn't exactly sure what to expect when I sat down to watch this. I was thinking maybe some kind of a cross between From Dusk Til Dawn and Underworld. Something that might not have the money for all the big budget special effects, but might have a decent enough story behind it to make up for that fact. Plus, the film stars one of my all time favorite young actors working today; Roswell alum, Jason Behr, so I knew at least on an aesthetic level I was in for a treat.

Now the story, believe it or not, isn't half bad. The special effects and make up are clearly victims of their budgets but given that, they are passable. Even the performances are pretty good considering the material. Sadly though, it's in the overall presentation of all of these elements where Skinwalkers loses its theatrical credibility.

Native Americans referred to what we call Werewolves as Skinwalkers. In modern times there are now two separate groups of these moon howling man-dogs spread throughout the country; those who enjoy being werewolves and embrace the killing and those who want it to end. The latter group is waiting for the thirteenth birthday of a young child born of both human and skinwalker who is said to have the power to end the curse and restore everyone to normal. These people are scattered in small groups hiding from those who want to find and kill the boy to keep the skinwalking clan alive and killing!

Jason Behr plays Varek the leader of the group sent to find and kill the boy. His merry little band of biker wolves, after about ten minutes of 'searching' discover where he is and ride into a small town America on their Harleys to kill him. Of course everyone in the town, which is about 5 people total, have been expecting this and whip out their big shot guns, which I guess they carry everyday and defend the boy. The only two in the town who don't have the slightest clue as to what is going on is the kid and his mom. Even grandma is out there in the gun fight to protect the kid.

I'm all about the suspension of disbelief but oh my God this was the least believable gun fight in the history of on screen shoot outs! Here is where the presentation of the material ruins things. On paper it makes total sense, they come to town to get the kid, the townspeople rally around the kid and save his life and they hit the road to get away; but the way it was shot was just plain stupid. You cannot drag out a gun fight like that for what felt like 15 minutes and have only one person

ultimately end up dead! The amount of flying bullet cases alone should have taken out at least a few people never mind the bullets themselves! It was just beyond ridiculous.

The rest of the movie unfolds as you would expect – further explanation of what is going on, a few more shoot outs and then the big finish. The interesting thing about this movie is that the ones who don't want to be werewolves anymore lock themselves into straightjackets when it's time for them to turn to keep themselves from killing; because as soon as you kill once, then you're hooked on it and automatically evil! But you have to wonder how they managed to lock themselves up the very first night they were gonna wolf out, and if as soon as you wolf out and kill you're evil, how did this human woman manage to have sex with her husband and not realize he was a killer werewolf the night before?

There are more than a few messy plot points like that, that I think if they had worked on the script for just a little longer and taken a little more care in the direction they might have had something decent on their hands. As it is, Skinwalkers is a pretty forgettable horror movie destined to spawn forgettable sequels that will probably end up with completely different cast members. And like I said, I really only paid attention because of Jason.

First up in the Special Features department on this single disc DVD are the Deleted Scenes, although they should actually be called Deleted Moments because I don't think a single one is over 25 seconds long and none of them add anything to the story so I can understand why they were cut out of the film, just not sure why they were added into the DVD as 'extras'?

Next we've got the theatrical trailer for the film, which is actually way more exciting than the movie itself, other titles available from Lionsgate and some behind the scenes stuff about the make up and special fx. The FX featurette is incredibly short just talking about the digital aspect of some of the shots. There's also a Pre-Visualization segment that honestly looks like an episode of South Park. Definitely check that out you will see what I mean.

The Making of Skinwalkers Featurette is really the only one worth watching. Of course it has a lot of the producers and director patting themselves on the back which is standard but it's interesting from the point of view of seeing where they were intending to go with this thing and then compare it to what you the viewer walked away with.

I neither hated nor loved this film. I could probably watch it again without feeling too badly about it and I will definitely be interested to see what

happens in the sequel, but I'm not sure I'm going to be so bold as to invite others to roll the dice with me.

Movie Grade: C-

DVD Features Grade: C

Overall Grade: C-