Reviews

This movie moves slowly, so slowly that you find yourself fighting to maintain interest and keep from sleeping yourself. I was willing to give it a chance because Eric Roberts was supposedly the star but he has only 2 cameos without real substance.

Look, I'll get straight to the point - this was an LGBTQ movie in which the mother of the female protagonist comes to terms with her daughter Mary being a dyke (the daughter's words, not mine), Mary is seeing and communicating with dead people as in "The Sixth Sense" and is having trouble sleeping, and she leads the dead spirit of the religious holistic doctor (who you think is alive) into forgiving himself for initially rejected his son when he came out of the closet as gay and then killed himself by running into the street a year ago whereupon Mary runs into him driving home from her birthday party. His ghost constantly is running around in the movie saying cryptic stuff to her. The same night his son died this doctor killed himself by cutting his own throat, unable to bear the guilt of rejecting his son for not being straight.

But it's all just fine in the end, you see, because Mary convinces the father's ghost to forgive himself and at the end at her next birthday party sees their ghosts in the garden sitting on a bench and smiling and laughing. BTW, the 'big reveal' in the movie is that the holistic doctor was dead all along when Mary was seeing him for help, once Eric Robert's drug-prescribing doctor couldn't help her.

This movie is not a thriller, it's an LGBTQ vehicle which is fine if that's what you wanted to watch but it's totally not fine to not be honest on the description on the DVD cover nor in the IMDB write-up.

I'm giving it a '2' because it dragged, it was full of soap opera standard fare and it was derivative of far better movies AND it was NOT a thriller. Plus Eric Roberts was used as a lure to get you to watch it when he was really not that important to the movie.

With apologies, I have no idea what other reviewers highly rating this movie saw - perhaps a different movie? Much more likely they saw it when they were young and impressionable, it scared them, and they now recall it fondly. I'm a big fan of this genre and time period but this was an agonizingly slow, boring and dumb movie with an abrupt and disappointing ending.

I think Montgomery did some excellent acting in other movies of the time but she was given very little to work with here, other than wandering about a house calling 'Susan? Where are you?' umpteen times, while her sister Susan is already dead in the basement. There's a raging storm, it's dark, the power goes out briefly and the phone line has been cut - whatever will she do?

If your idea of a fast-paced, fun watch is an episode of "Murder, She Wrote" then you might actually enjoy this made-for-TV movie, seriously. It is mercifully short at 1 hour 13 minutes since they had to pack in over 45 minutes of commercials during the initial airing.

I grew so bored with her poking around that I turned the subtitles on and fast-forwarded the movie until some event happened. There is one unintentionally funny gaffe - near the end of the movie as she is heading up the stairs making a lot of noise she stops and the noise continues for almost 2 seconds - apparently made by the film crew. At least fast-forward to that scene!

By the time I stopped watching my brother had already fallen asleep.

This movie was slow with a weird music soundtrack that particularly aggravated me. Every male had thick 1960s glasses like Woody Allen (Anson Mount's were different) and everyone was smoking - that was the most entertaining aspect of the whatever this film was. Since I knew this was only based on true events I knew some aspects and characters would be fictional but after seeing (1) a CIA agent having sex with an apparent prostitute in a bathroom while almost fully dressed, (2) Anson tied up and gagged on his own bed while his wife was giving him oral sex (unsuccessfully) and then (3) the same CIA agent beating a nude man hanging from something in some perverted sado-masochistic act I bailed on the movie. What in the devil does graphic depictions of sexual acts have to do with what we all expected to see, a depiction of what the U. S. government did (and surely still does) to unsuspecting innocent citizens???

After 10 minutes I KNEW the rating over 6 at IMDB was a lie but after seeing all of this within the first 20 minutes or so I knew I had to rate it a 1 star. It is a tribute to how bad this movie was that I could not even finish it which I often will if the movie is cheesy bad in a good way. This was awful and everyone in it looked like they had awakened with a hangover and had been constipated for 4 days.

My advice - this movie was a bad trip, avoid it!

Nice scenery in Canada thought I was wondering why the trapper never bothered to fish in that trout river - lol.

As someone else mentioned, this is slow. At first it works as you get to follow the trapper on his rounds and it was a nice touch that they used actual dead animals, I suppose from an actual trapper.

But the pace never changes, very few words are spoken by anyone until about 15 minutes in a frenetic ending and the entire movie felt dragged out to cover the run time. It never was exactly clear to me why the criminals were so inept and why so much violence erupted AFTER the trapper turns the backpack full of drugs he'd found a week or so later where he had discovered the body of Keith. And as far as the reclusive trapper turning into Captain Save-a-Ho that was ridiculous. The lady was pregnant with Keith's child and Keith was a drug dealing criminal - so that's who you're going to fall in love with WITHOUT EVEN KISSING HER or knowing a thing about her???

He deserved to die at the end for her, both idiots, both losers, and she takes off leaving him dying because why not? The movie didn't interfere with me getting stuff done around the house since you didn't miss anything important because there wasn't anything important to miss except the movie, which I highly recommend you avoid like a fresh cow patty - I stepped in it so you don't have to.

First, let me state that as I am typing this around 3pm CDT on August 30, 2022, there are undeniable signs of vote packing - 14.8% of the total are for a 10 star rating, more than all of the 7, 8 and 9 star combined (13%). This is not possible unless bad actors are inflating the rating as we see often, and STILL the overall rating is 4.5 stars - people like me are down-voting it on purpose to get it closer to the real rating which IMHO should be around 2.

As for the movie, this is one of those that had a decent concept and decent acting but it was way, way too slow. Almost nothing of any note happens until near the end and I had guessed within the first 2 minutes of the movie that the creature lurking near the tree in the background where the blind son (Solomon) was looking is the mother (Nydia), for some reason mutated - this is never made clear but you could tell she 'evolved' because of the clues they put in the movie (a hunter named Hank near the end of the movie finds a journal addressed to the son with the first pages legible but later filled with increasingly unreadable gibberish addressed to the son, and it's in some kind of huge, tree-limb covered nest).

Anyway, Solomon is abandoned by Nydia with no clear explanation given to the kid as to why she left, in a house without utilities close to woods. The reason she split was that she was turning gradually into a creature of some kind (her with some makeup and contact lenses as it turns out) and she's chained up out in the woods. Before she left she taught the boy some rules, never to go out without the rope around his waist attached to the house and to always split the game and fish he caught in two and throw half into the woods. She herself is chained to prevent her from attacking him and I guessed that immediately as well when he found the chain (but then couldn't she have attacked him then???). A plot hole. And of course she's eating whatever he does throw into the woods as we see animal bones in one scene in a pile, otherwise she'd starve.

Anyway, Hank kills a deer and after defending himself against the kid who panics he eventually befriends him, obviously concerned since the kid looks like a hillbilly, is blind, lives on his own and is running out of canned food. Sounds promising, right?

WRONG - we see almost every stinking movement of this kid, so boring and slow as he manages his way to and fro. And the hunter speaks to the kid as if he is a little child. So aggravating. Obviously a very low budget though the camera work was okay.

At the end of the movie Hank, having several times heard this weird screaming, goes out with his rifle to set a bear trap and gets killed by Nydia, and of course the budget doesn't allow for a kill scene to be shown, all we ever see are some fake scratches on his dead face. Apparently Hank gets off a shot and Solomon, hearing it, makes his slow, slow way to investigate, finds the dead hunter, then his mother rushes out to get him but the chain stops her short. So the kid starts humming their favorite song, something she told him always to do when he felt bad, and she recognizes it and starts humming it too. He comes closer with tears in his eyes, close enough for her to rush him and she hugs him, recognizing her son. At this moment Solomon (the kid) naturally takes the opportunity to stab her to death. Sorry, ma! Shortly thereafter his white eyes develop the same eerie, reptile-like retinas his mother had and the movie ends. There was a father involved but he was out of the picture when the movie started and I am only guessing Nydia killed HIM, perhaps in some kind of ritual that these creatures go through. That clue was dropped when the hunter found and read a different journal in the house to Solomon but stopped reading it when he came to a page where Nydia wrote angry words about the husband trying to take Solomon and there's a drawing of the chain she was tethered to.

Never answered: what kind of creatures were they? What was their story? How did the mother get chained in the first place? I have to assume she did it when she was still mostly normal (before she left we hear her cough a few times, I suppose that was signaling the change). What happened to the father? Why didn't the hunter the morning after he left the kid go to his vehicle if he had one (it was never shown) and get the authorities to rescue the kid? Here's something odd - he apparently doesn't possess a cell phone since there was no standard scene of 'I can't get a signal!'. There was no boat shown and there was no lake or river ever shown that he could have used it on, only a rocky and turbulent stream too small to navigate on, so how did he get to the woods??? Before the mother mutated her vision was perfect (and though her eyes are different her vision is still fine) so why did Solomon have completely white eyes that ended up matching hers? What was the point then of him being blind??? And what is the point of mutating and living like an animal chained in the woods? If I knew that was happening to me I'd kill myself but only after taking the kid somewhere to drop him off with someone. But seriously, what was the end game for the creature? I don't get it.

WHY did I watch this movie (for free thank goodness!) without checking out the honest 1 star reviews on IMDB? I almost always do, dang it, but at least I hope you profit from my review and avoid this movie like the plague it is, unless you suffer from insomnia.

If you haven't already please read some of the 1 star reviews with spoilers - they do a great job of telling you why you shouldn't be watching this drek. I hope to give you a more complete summary of why this is a very bad 'horror' movie.

1 - (already mentioned) - How did that shady mechanic disable the couple's car when the husband David was standing next to him while he 'fixed' it? Also, why show David later bashing his wrapped hand into the mirror to fashion a crude mirror knife when he never uses it later? And yes, as others mentioned, later David is stabbed and supposedly lasts for hours unconscious and doesn't bleed out - that is total BS. However, if you follow this #1 Rule of Horror Movies you will almost never be surprised - "They are never dead UNTIL they are dead!".

2 - Let's for a moment accept that some run-down, flea-bitten motel is kept open as a trap to spring on lost couples who ventured off the interstate and make snuff films. Based on the number of snuff films we see one would think these bad guys would have it down to a science, both in terrorizing the victims and in preventing them from fighting back. Part of that science would be the following:

a. Don't leave snuff tape VHS tapes in the honeymoon suite for the couple to see and alert them that the room they're in was used to make them.

B. Don't make a few childish hang-up calls to the room phone - that's annoying, not scary.

C. Don't bang on the doors and run away, you're just putting them into a defensive posture.

D. Once they're inside, completely lock down the room so that only the bad guys can get in. All the snuff films take place inside the room with cameras strategically located, they don't include the victims running around outside and you chasing them.

E. Disable ALL telephone connections (turns out the cell phones don't get reception out there of course anyway!). (This would have prevented the wife Amy from calling 911 later).

F. Don't leave guns that are loaded in the open where anyone can get to them in the motel office. (This would have prevented Amy from killing the motel manager).

3 - By examining the snuff films David is able to figure out that a figure usually appears from the direction of the bathroom and uncovers a trap door under the bath mat that leads down into a WWII prisoner camp-style warren of tunnels lit by incandescent light bulbs strung along the tunnels that lead all over, including into the motel office and under the other rooms' bathrooms.

A. If you're going to all that trouble to dig all those tunnels why wouldn't you as the bad guys install locks on the INSIDE of each trap door to prevent the victims from opening it from the OUTSIDE and escaping down into the tunnels???

B. The motel was located in a desert area and yet we see a pack of racks milling around in one area - why? What were they eating to be down there? And if they were eating previous victims WHY didn't the filmmakers show that for the shock effect??? Btw, wild rats don't mill around you, they RUN unless they are starving and these rats weren't.

4. The worst of course was already mentioned - the original lone cop that showed up to a situation that obviously called for multiple cars gets killed early in the morning and it's not until daylight that Amy gets a 911 call off - what were those goobers back at the station thinking when the cop never called back in to check in for hours??? That was an insanely stupid plot point. But they could have accounted for it by making everyone at the police station EXCEPT that cop part of the snuff film operation which would then explain how they got away with killing so many people and getting rid of their cars, bodies and evidence! And the ending would have been great where they show up, load Amy and David in the police car and then drive off with a knowing look in the rear view mirror at Amy cradling David en route to some desert dump site.

I literally could have written a really good script for this, at least 'what not to do'!

"This Side of Paradise" - they ripped this episode off, they didn't even need to rip off "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" as this episode had the plants spewing pollen just as the plants in this movie do.

This should have been a 45 minute episode of some sci-fi series, not 1 hours and 45 minutes. The soundtrack as mentioned elsewhere is laughably out of place and horrible to the ear drums and the plot moves at a snail's pace when it moves at all.

DON'T WATCH THIS.

Instead, watch the old Star Trek episode that is so much better:

"The Enterprise is ordered to clean up the aftermath of a doomed colony on Omicron Ceti III, a planet under constant irradiation from deadly Berthold Rays. Upon arrival, however, the colonists aren't only alive but in perfect health, with no desire to leave their new world. They are in fact under the influence of plant spores which not only keep them in good and improved health but simultaneously keep them in a placid state of happiness and contentment. Mr Spock reacquaints with Leila Kalomi, an old friend who had been (and still is) in love with him. She leads Spock into being affected by the spores, and he is thereafter, for the first time, able to express love for her in return. Eventually the entire ship's crew is affected, leaving Kirk alone to wonder how he can possibly rescue them from perpetual bliss. -Clive Wilson"

Note - this movie was a Tubi production.

I'm a huge horror fan and enjoyed seeing Dern, Zane, Barbeau, Foster and Todd in the movie but only the first three had any real roles (which were too small) which was a real waste. I thought the other actors and actresses were okay and I really liked the small town setting. I also liked the cinematography.

But what the movie failed to do was what a movie like "Lake Placid" did - deliver a well-crafted script with funny moments (they tried but there wasn't enough 'hits') and a real punch in the death scenes. Except for a few brief moments with the monster, the special effects were so lacking that almost all of the death scenes were implied and the killing blows took place off camera. And note to the writers of this - Claymore mines don't simply explode in a big plume of dark smoke. The action scenes involving guns were a joke. This movie was rated R only due to some scattered obscenities, there was no nudity or gore. Also, the pacing for a good part of the movie was just too slow and some of the scenes were simply not believable - for example, why did Candyman (Tony Todd) simply sacrifice himself when he had no need to nor the motivation to do so?

I actually at first thought that the 5 veteran horror movie actors and actresses had pooled their own money together to produce this movie but after seeing the credits I realized they didn't. Smart move.

Look, if you're bored late at night and you really have nothing better to do then give it a look. Adrienne, you really kept yourself fit. But Meg Foster looks like Darth Vader when they removed his helmet at the end of "The Return of the Jedi" which is a darn shame.

I thought Dern's monologue at the beginning was funny but Tubi, if you're going to make a movie with people of this quality for the love of all that's holy GIVE THEM A SCRIPT!!! Hire some competent writers! And spend some money on special effects! You suck out most of the horror in a horror movie when all the gore is implied because it takes place off screen!

P.s. I am so tired of seeing movies like this initially with high ratings (6.5 stars as of my review) obviously not real. Cast, people who worked on the movie and their friends are obviously skewing these reviews - don't fall for it. Read the most negative reviews first as they have no financial motive to post them, as I don't.

I suckered myself into watching this funeral procession because Peter Sellers was in it. Anyone could have played his character, there was nothing in the character that allowed Sellers' acting to shine whatsoever. The premise was interesting but then, unavoidably, it became dark, repressive and unendingly boring because what else could it possibly be? It was based on a true story and the only 2 survivors were found in 1951 by a crew clearing German fortifications and they had survived 4 years in total darkness. Sellers' character killed himself near the movie's end so he didn't make it.

If you are having problems sleeping just fast forward to about the 30 minute mark and you'll soon be in sweet dreamland.

This does not work on a lesbian level. This does not work on a vegan spoof level. This does not work remotely on a horror level. This doesn't work at all except for a very funny appearance by a co-worker during lunches at one of the women's workplace (a bank). That guy was great!

This movie was expanded way past the run time it should have been - this would have worked as a short much better, but it just dragged and dragged. At the end you just don't about either of them, you just wish the dog had a different owner. Completely uninvolving movie that had possibilities squandered by a vision-less director.

How bad was it? The woman with the breakdown had buried a 10 lb roll of hamburger meat in the yard, came back out and dug it up and started smearing handfuls of it all over her face and mouth, started spitting it out, suddenly her AWOL girlfriend shows up to comfort her, they get in the shower, the end. The dog who you haven't seen for quite a while shows up, peers in the window at them and then leaves.

I seriously considered wasting more of my time reviewing this garbage but fortunately enough brain cells kicked in to prevent it. Please don't make the mistake I did and watch this!

You want a good movie in this genre and time period (1994) to watch? See "The Last Seduction" with Bill Pullman and Linda Fiorentina. This movie is so boring I actually closed my eyes and kicked the recliner up more than a few times so to rest my brain.

Here's the spoiler - Linda Hamilton's character actually does have a split personality and her daddy's the one actually killing people and who Linda witnessed killing his wife and her lover when she was a child, causing the split. Since every possible suspect is already dead you know he's the killer before the final reveal. Belushi kills the daddy by defenestrating him (i.e., he chucks him out a window) and Linda checks into a mental health clinic to heal (and she's actually a psychiatrist!). The End. There, I saved you 1 hour and 40 minutes of red herrings, minor action, a car chase and James Belushi who always has the same fixed expression on his face in this movie no matter the circumstances. But a far better ending would have been to have Linda faking her condition (her alter ego Lena was sex-starved and violent) so she could kill with impunity and get away with it if she turned out to be a psychopath. At least that twist would have been cool.

The setup is insanely stupid - a middle-aged Belushi is taking psych classes from her, having retired from the homicide squad due to mental anguish from having seen his wife shoot herself and plans to be a shrink. Yes, you've read that right. Not only that but Linda, knowing he's an ex-cop, asks him to follow her around at night and film her alter ego. So he does. Much stupidity follows.

Happy ending reveals that Belushi has now rejoined Homicide and has wasted 3 years of study and money since he won't become a shrink now. But it's obvious they'll be hooking up after she gets released from the clinic and Belushi's young daughter of course approves.

Me, I'd run far, far away from a nutcase like Linda - no thanks.

I.

To all of you who are giving high ratings to this pathetic excuse for a 'movie' - you are full of it and you know it. You have to either know people in the film or are the people in the film. The rating is simply far too high - anything above a 1 is too high.

Let me help those of you who read the reviews to save 1 hour and 22 minutes of your life - if you want to watch good horror try 'Wer' or 'Honeymoon', both on Tubi TV as this one was.

I love desert movies and I love horror, and they did show the desert but horror was nowhere to be found. If you want narration about a crime that is actually compelling then watch 'The First 48' series that films real homicide detectives trying to solve real crimes. The only crime in this movie was suckering the viewers like me into thinking there was going to be some interesting horror. Let me break the movie down for you:

Several people are interviewed during most of the movie, talking and talking and talking about Gary as if he was some monumental figure. He isn't. He's actually deadly dull, loves trains, has no career aspirations, lives with a roommate who has no curiosity as to where Gary goes on wilderness trips, is apparently super smart (no way!) but is actually so dumb that whenever he goes for an extended trip into the high desert HE TELLS NO ONE WHERE HE IS GOING OR HOW LONG HE WILL BE GONE. Repeatedly. Including his stupid sister who is so stupid that KNOWING he's often gone for a week called 911 to report him missing after TWO DAYS! Oh yeah, this genius limits the provisions and water he takes so he can practice survival skills, a lot of which he videos with a handheld camera and posts to his blog that supposedly has 50,000 followers (why??? He is so freaking boring!!!) and yet none of his relatives or friends are aware of the blog.

Anyhow, the interviews are filmed weeks after they already know what happened to Gary. So that you do not waste your time on a completely unscary movie, Gary had found some shack in the high desert with smoke coming out of the chimney, left and then came back at night with infrared turned on with the camera to find out who lives there, one of the dumbest possible things to do since it is dangerous in a dark desert when all the creepy crawlies including rattlesnakes are active, spots a disfigured man near the shack and the 'found footage' from Gary's camera manages to bore the viewers' socks off with shaky close-ups of the ground, bushes, and trees just because. Gary takes a gun out (when did he get that???), shoots about 6 times at the figure who has a machete and whose face eventually is captured in the final shot, just before he chopped off Gary's camera hand. We know this because they show a picture of it still gripping the camera. As soon as Gary saw the man with the machete, who honestly may have feared that someone was going to rob him, why didn't Gary LEAVE!??? The other guy had no light initially, but later lit a torch and even then in complete darkness would never have been able to track Gary nor catch up with him.

The movie ends with them babbling that other social media followers are attempting to identify the shack and the man who killed him. And one of them claims that they'll know by 2022, as if the film maker thinks people are stupid enough to clamor for a sequel.

Frankly, this is one of the worst movies I've ever seen even if the interviews did a good job of appearing real. That's because there was zero horror anywhere - you didn't even see Gary get his hand chopped off. I'll bet they made this movie for the cost of pizzas for the entire crew and $5,000 for the editing and adding music for the soundtrack. The found footage which is always supposed to be the most compelling part of any found footage movie is sleep-inducing and I detest the laziness of the director (Dutch Maritch) who also wrote this movie in making it. At least he wrote about a place he knew because Dutch was raised in the real town of Ruth, Nevada, where the movie is set. Dutch, since I'm positive you read all the reviews of your own movie, PLEASE think about what horror is actually about. You don't need to copy other movies but the good ones should be instructive to you. Do you honestly believe that people find your movie at all good that aren't your friends and relatives? I think there was a real horror movie hidden there somewhere but the pedestrian plotting and slow plodding of the movie killed it, along with the laughable final found footage.

Production value was there but the plot and screenplay were really confusing, with nothing compelling in the whole movie except to find out what 'white space' or what was beyond it actually was. Want to know the ending? The ICE agent (I'm not kidding) gets into a space pod as the ship the Essex was being destroyed by the space 'dragon' and she escapes and enters a blinding white space and then was later ejected out as searchers somehow found her. That was it - we saw nothing, the dragon was gone and everyone else died. Infuriating that they couldn't even give the ending meaning.

I'll point out the Moby Dick elements that other reviewers didn't mention. The ship's captain's quarters had a figure of a white whale hanging on the wall and a model of a whale ship on a desk. The spaceship he captains is called the Essex, which was the name of an actual whaleship that was struck and sunk by an enraged sperm whale in 1820 in the Southern Pacific - of the 20 man crew, only 8 survived because they resorted to cannibalism. The first mate on that ship survived and had the first name of Owen, the same first name of the movie's captain's brother who was also the first mate of the spaceship. Part of the plot involves the captain's father who was killed when the dragon destroyed HIS spaceship, the Acushnet - that just happens to be the first whaleship that the author of Moby Deck (Herman Mellville) ever crewed on. At the end, part of Melville's Moby Dick famous quotation was directed at the dragon by the captain: "To the last, I grapple with thee; From Hell's heart, I stab at thee; For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee." He spoke the 'spit' part. Finally, as you probably realized by now the Essex whaleship sinking was the inspiration for Moby Dick.

That's it. I read all the positive reviews here and I had to laugh. If that was the 'beach scene' in those days then people were a lot dumber back then than I thought. Tanya Roberts could not act her way out of a paper bag and neither could anyone else. It was like watching a high school production with all the cool kids and a few nerds trying to actually act. The plot was ridiculous - so Dennis shows up with essentially a jazz record his dead brother in Chicago made and some clothes, immediately gets hooked up with a free room and essentially hangs out for a few months without a job or any money and it's all cool??? Btw, his character is as worse a dweeb as you will ever see in a movie and somehow he gets adopted by 2 'cool' surfers, both of whom could not beat a hamster in an IQ test. At least I liked the ending when Tanya dumps the cheating boyfriend at the airport and the 'dude' in the welded-shut car (it was a bet to win a Corvette if he stayed in it for 6 weeks) had cement poured into the Vette to spite his cheating girlfriend.

If you like stupid movies with a late 70s vibe, sand, bikinis and acting that is non-existent then this is right up your alley.