Happy New Year, Pig Folk!

It’s been awhile since I stumbled on an amusing straight-to-video horror picture, but I dare say I found one. If you are the overly aware horror geek that I am, then you now a lot of Internet critics have shit on this little picture. What they were expecting, I have no idea. Here’s what it is: a low-budget monster movie set on an oil rig. The actors are pretty game, although often seem a bit green as far as their craft is concerned, but that doesn’t matter. The story runs in circles a bit through much of the movie, I guess because when you only have so much money you’ve got to stretch out time between monster mayhem in order to reach feature running time, but again this doesn’t matter. And their “name” actor is William Forsythe, who has always been one of my faves, but maybe he’s phoning it in just a little bit on this one (guess what? Doesn’t matter.) All these elements are nothing to complain about, given what kind of picture it is, but the critics make it seem like it is just another SyFy Channel saturday night premiere when it is heads and tails above anything that channel has ever boasted. Here’s why:

The monster isn’t a cartoon. That’s right, folks! The movie doesn’t use a computer generated creature. It’s a guy in a suit (a guy who also plays an actual guy in the movie, which you’ll see if you bother with the after-thought behind-the-scenes footage.) Sure, sometimes it’s kind of clear it is a guy in a suit, but because it is a guy in a suit all the other actors are more engaged with the monster, and all those boring action scenes in modern low-budget monster movies are suddenly fun again! If SyFy made their monster movies like this, I would do nothing but watch the SyFy channel. Beyond the monster itself, the use of an actual oil rig gives the movie some visual grit, which was also a plus. If you like your monsters in suits instead of binary code, check this one out. It’s a good time.

Lots o’ love, Tonn.