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thetauren13
Reviews
Troglodyte (2008)
Surprisingly Enjoyable
Worthless plot, lame acting, by-the-numbers flick. Nonetheless, I rather enjoyed it.
This highly predictable movie adds nothing to a world of monster movies. If you're looking for a masterful piece with an inventive story and relatable characters, go somewhere else. However, if you want to be mindlessly entertained and simply enjoy watching CGI monsters tear things up, check out this title.
The beast itself is very well done. Seeing it in action, you would never guess this is just another low-budget made-for-scifi channel movie. When the beast is on-screen, the movie really shines; and fortunately it has a decent amount of screen time, since things are extraordinarily lame when the beast isn't around.
Also, trying to avoid any spoilers, I'll just say I was pleasantly surprised with the ending as far as the characters were concerned. Horror movies are all to often predictable in this respect, and it seems the most annoying characters wind up alive.
Finally, the girl is relatively attractive to look at, which helps any movie's cause, and turned out to be capable of some unexpected ass-kickery.
Overall, a very fun movie to watch. Unless you're a snotty film critic who thinks you're gifted with some kind of social superiority, I'd recommend it.
Dark Fields (2006)
Move Along, Nothing To See Here
If you're interested in seeing this movie, don't. The only thing it does well is bore you half to death. There is no plot and no acting. I could forgive such grievances for a lot of slasher films, but you have to at least attempt to make it up some other way. This movie could have at least salvaged itself as a mediocre slasher if there was some gore and nudity. Unfortunately, there was neither. The vast majority of this movie is spent watching these silly kinds wander around and say dumb stuff to each other, with only one even remotely gory incident (and I use the term 'gore' lightly). There were also plenty of chances for both of the actresses to show their boobs on screen, but somehow they managed to pass it up. Boring, boring, and even more boring. And I'm not even going to get into the ridiculous plot holes or how incredibly lame the killer is, or how anticlimactic and contrived the climax is...
The Descent (2005)
Just Didn't Do It For Me
I really wanted to like this movie. I'd heard quite a few good things about it and was really looking forward to watching it, so perhaps that was part of the reason I was disappointed; my expectations were too high.
First off, after just the first 10 minutes of the movie it was glaringly obvious to me which of the women would be the one to survive. Perhaps it's more of a problem with the genre, but when you put some back story into one of the characters but not any of the others, you're christening him or her as the main character, and it's already a given that he or she will survive (if, of course, anyone at all does). Now, normally I wouldn't mind that a whole lot, but the problem here was that I simply did not like Sarah's character. She rubbed me the wrong way from the start, I guess. And it didn't help that she actually killed off the one character I did like (for an absurd reason, no less); I really wanted Juno to live and was hoping against hope the whole time that she would.
Second, from the moment the so-called 'crawlers' appeared on screen, all I could think of was Sméagol from The Lord of the Rings, and let's just say that kinda killed my enjoyment of the film. I appreciate trying to make the creatures somewhat realistic, but I guess it was just bad luck how they turned out... I would have been much happier if the characters had been attacked by giant spiders or something.
Anyways, now that I've let my disappointment out, I'd still rate the film marginally favorably. After all, it was far better than Living Hell or some other such garbage, and I was more let down by my expectations than by the movie itself.