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HORRORHOUND #33

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(2009)
Directed by Robert David Sanders
Starring Barbara Streifel Sanders, Joseph Dunn, Ian Malcolm, Michael Caruso, Caroline Rich, Anthony Tedesco,
James Martinez, John Gorman, Alexis Zibolis, Ace Gibson

The film starts out introducing us to many different characters living in or going to a certain apartment complex, giving us a little bit of their back stories. It’s Christmas Eve in Los Angeles and the city has been plagued by earth tremors, power surges and momentary blackouts. Just another day in LA. But once a young boy goes down to the apartment’s basement to get an early Christmas present, he finds something that Santa definitely didn’t leave.

The acting is not bad for this type of movies. The main leads do a pretty good job coming off as real people. Some of the background cast are a little lesser quality, but all do much better than what you’d think you would get from a lower budgeted film. There lies a slight good/bad thing in the story dealing with the characters. Without giving too much away, we learn right from the first death, that nobody is safe in this movie. Which is a good thing, because the audience won’t know what to expect. But the bad side is that once we learn that nobody is really safe, we start to really not care about any of them because we know they are all disposable. Sure, we might wonder which ones if any are going to make it through, but we’re not making those calls to Vegas just yet.

For me, the highlight of the film was the creatures themselves. Yes, they do have some CGI tails added on which makes some of the kills even more cartoonish. But as for the look and design, kudos out to Greg McDougall for coming up with something a little different than what we’ve seen before, but also something that looks pretty cool and pretty frightening. Yea, it’s a guy in a suit with a CGI tail, but it’s different, which has to be one of the more difficult issues in these types of movies today. While the stories are the same ones over and over again, it’s always nice to see a fresh new monster.

I would say that this movie would be perfect fodder for the Sci-Fi Channel, except it’s a little bit better than that. Not great, mind you, but I’d say a little better than usually what’s on there. And if only because of the cool looking monsters.