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Review by MvMMDI
Added: May 26, 2007
There are times when I really enjoy writing negative reviews - take Creepshow III, for example. That movie was so god-awful and such a blatant money-grabbing scheme that I enjoyed tearing it to shreds on this site, and I truly feel no pity for stomping on the feelings of any of the crew who may stumble across it (although I somehow doubt they'd care). Then, there are movies like The Shadow Walkers which are pretty damned bad, but it's apparent that the people involved with it had good intentions and really thought they were putting together an entertaining film. These are the times when I hate writing negative reviews, but it has to be done.
The storyline is something along the lines of Saw meets Day of the Dead, although there are no torture devices or zombies to be found throughout the running time. There are, however, a group of humans trapped in an underground research facility who have no idea how they got there or what connection they have to one another, and there's also a bunch of genetically mutated humans who want nothing more than to tear the "normal" people limb from limb. Reeve (Jason Coviello) and Julie (Jennifer Summers) are our two main characters for the outing, and it's up to them to lead the others out of here in one piece.
When I read about this film, I had high hopes for it; I'm a sucker for a good monster movie, and the premise for this one sounded pretty interesting. However, it's the execution of things that really turned me off to the film as a whole, and I can honestly say that there wasn't a whole lot of positive things going on for it aside from ample amounts of cleavage.
For starters, how about those monsters? I realize that this was a low budget affair and I have to give the filmmakers credit for trying something halfway original here, but the makeup and mask jobs just didn't work for me. I can understand that they wouldn't have access to Lord of the Rings-style effects and creature designs, but the way that these critters looked was laughable at best, pathetic at worst. I could have overlooked that had the movie had something else going for it, but sadly, that wasn't the case.
The characters are as cookie-cutter as they come: there's the tough guy, the potential love interest, the brainy woman, the asshole doctor, the sex appeal female (you could make a drinking game out of her "let's tease an upskirt" shots), and a couple of monster fodder characters who serve as nothing more than eventual victims. I could have dealt with this had the actors playing the parts been a little more convincing, or hell, had they had some sort of acting skills, but again, that wasn't the case; aside from a few fairly convincing scenes, watching these kids going through the motions was akin to watching a high school play.
With those two complaints out of the way, I have to admit that I still could have enjoyed this had the film simply entertained me. After all, I'm seemingly one of the few people on the planet who enjoyed two of WWE's films (I say two because I've yet to see The Condemned), and neither of those are known for being works of art. However, I just couldn't get into this one because of the way the story is told. Once the stage is set and we figure out what's going on, it just becomes an exercise in monotony: the characters run from the monsters, they hide, one of them dies, insert an extremely out of place martial arts scene, repeat for about seventy minutes. Then, when the "ending" rolls around, it seems as though the filmmakers were simply teasing us; I was literally fighting to stay awake throughout the movie, and just when everything seems to be wrapping up and I'm reaching for the remote, there's some sort of twist and I realize that I'm going to have to sit through more. Then there's another twist, and another, and... you get the point.
As I said in the beginning of this review, I hate giving a negative review to a film like this when it's so obvious that the filmmakers had good intentions, but unfortunately for the viewing audience, good intentions do not always equal good movies. 3/10.
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