Movie Review | 'splinter' - Download Free Phim, Nhac, Phan Mem, Karaoke

conmeo · #1 (**permalink**) 10-31-2008, 04:00 PM

Night of the Living Spastic, Ravenous Porcupine Flesh-Eaters

At the beginning of “Splinter,” a diverting if not terribly original on-the-cheap horror film, a gas-station attendant is eating potato chips when a howling spiny creature suddenly eats him.

The proper opening note of grisly absurdism having been struck, the scene shifts to two couples: Seth (Paulo Costanzo) and Polly (Jill Wagner), who are out on an anniversary camping trip, and Dennis (Shea Whigham, who can also be seen in “Pride and Glory”) and Lacey (Rachel Kerbs), who are armed, on the lam, kicking a drug habit and prone to swearing even when it makes no grammatical sense. These four will spend the next 90 minutes or so bickering and fighting off the strange, spiky predators, who turn the bodies of their victims into spastic, ravenous porcupine zombies.

Working from an efficient, bare-bones script by Ian Shorr and Kai Barry, the director, Toby Wilkins, honors the conventions of the genre with skill and enough wit to keep the scares sharp. The monsters — whose sudden appearance on the landscape is never explained, but whose habits are analyzed by Seth, a biology grad student — are as gruesome as zombies and as creepy as bugs. Their spines bore into flesh, consume blood and transform dead bodies (and even severed limbs) into lurching flesh-eaters.

After Polly and Seth are carjacked by Dennis and Lacey, the two couples spend a long, bloody, tense night at a convenience store. The situation is fairly basic and doesn’t have the psychological or sociological nuance that distinguishes similar scenarios in George Romero’s “Living Dead” movies. But even though the characters conform to every expected stereotype, the acting is reasonably convincing. And the monsters travel light, unburdened by allegorical baggage. What are they supposed to be? I don’t know. Just really gross and scary, I think.

“Splinter” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has graphic violence and abundant profanity.

SPLINTER

Opens on Friday in Manhattan.

Directed by Toby Wilkins; written by Ian Shorr and Kai Barry; director of photography, Nelson Cragg; edited by David Michael Maurer; production designer, Jennifer Spence; creature design by Ozzy Alvarez; produced by Mr. Barry and Ted Kroeber; released by Magnet Releasing. At the Village East, Second Avenue at 12th Street, East Village. Running time: 1 hour 22 minutes.

WITH: Charles Baker (Blake Sherman Jr.), Jill Wagner (Polly Watt), Paulo Costanzo (Seth Belzer), Shea Whigham (Dennis Farell), Rachel Kerbs (Lacey Belisle) and Laurel Whitsett (Sheriff Terri Frankel).

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