Skinwalkers Reviews

To honest, I wasn’t expecting much from this flick but since I have a weak spot for Rhona Mitra, I thought I should check this one out. By the way, what the hell happened to her? I didn’t even know that but, apparently, she started as the live action model for Lara Croft from the ‘Tomb Raider’ video game series before Angelina Jolie took over the role and, about 6-7 years ago, she managed to get the lead in such big productions like ‘Doomsday’ and ‘Underworld: Rise of the Lycans’, becoming a hot item in the process, but she pretty much disappeared as quickly as she came in the spotlight. Anyway, I always thought that she was be pretty bad-ass and the poster for this movie looked actually pretty cool (let me give you a piece of advice : never watch a movie just because you like the poster...) Unfortunately , the whole thing turned out to pretty bad and just plain boring. Seriously, even the action scenes were just really lame. Actually, the only thing I liked about this movie was eventually the poster... Anyway, to conclude, it was pretty bad, I don’t think it was worth a look whatsoever and you should pretty much avoid it.

Werewolves or Skinwalkers fall into two camps: those who want a peaceful coexistence with humans and the others who have tasted blood and are addicted to it. An ancient prophecy foretells that on his 13th birthday, a half-human, half-werewolf boy will gain the power to end the curse of the Skinwalkers and restore their humanity. With four days till that eventful time, the former group of Skinwalkers will do everything that they can to see the prophecy fulfilled while the latter only wants to see the boy dead.

Skinwalkers has a decent story and it moves along at a quick pace. But I have three major problems with the movie.

First, the lack of character exposition. Sure the movie has a good pace but I don't think it would have hurt to have 5 to 10 minutes of exposition to flesh out the characters - particularly Jason Behr's character, the leader of the bad Skinwalkers. The boy's nightmares are also not adequately explained and even the surprise reveal in the middle elicits nothing more beyond an "Oh, okay".

The other thing I hated was the surreal standoff about 10 minutes into the movie. I don't see how you can be standing 20 feet from the bad guy with nothing blocking you and not be able to shoot him straight on. Ridiculous!
Plus, are there only 6 - 10 people living in this town?

The most heinous thing about this movie is that it isn't scary. Nothing shock-worthy happens, there's no sense of creepiness - I don't know if you could actually call this a horror movie.

The acting was alright, no complaints on my end and the creature effects were good - I liked the transformation sequences and was glad they made it man-in-suit as opposed to cgi.

The final showdown was fine, nothing spectacular but the most memorable thing was the coda. The last few scenes in the motel room despite the cheesy family reunion has me interested in seeing a follow-up to Skinwalkers.

Atrocious and yet amusing. Which is why I watched the whole thing, so I could snicker at it. I figure I should get my moneys worth.
As a concept it was workable but once made into a movie, well it just didn't work. I think that's because it was not only poorly executed but perhaps shouldn't have been made into a movie in the first place. A book, now that could have worked. Could have, but then again who knows.
The acting was pretty bad and then granny with her gun was even worse but at least it was mildly entertaining in a humorous way. Throw in the looks these people gave each other, the nurse who was flirting with a child, the fact that the werewolves kept their clothes on and intact (pfft) and they didn't really look like wolves in the first place in my opinion and that's even more reason for it to be a movie to laugh at not spend your money on.