Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I saw this one myself a few months back, but I couldn't bring myself to write up a review. It's not "piss-you-off-bad," but it's kinda lame. I just couldn't muster up the energy to talk about it one way or the other. It's just depressing to me that we finally get some new Stan Winston werewolves and they looked so bad... But, you didn't click on this story to read my ramblings. I give you our very own Anton Sirius!!!
Skinwalkers (2007, directed by James Isaac) Werewolves have it tough in the movies. Vampires get all the chicks, while zombies get all the cool satirical political subtext. Werewolves, though? Other than some sweet makeup effects, the werewolf movie really has nothing to hang its hat on as a genre. It's probably just as well then that Skinwalkers doesn't aim for anything revolutionary, because it's got its hands full just trying to tell a coherent story. There are two kinds of werewolves in the film's universe: the kind that like being werewolves, and the kind that don't. The ones that don't are waiting for the obligatory Navajo prophecy to fulfill itself, and for a 13-year-old boy to cure all the werewolves. The kind that like it want to hunt the kid down and eat him before the prophecy can come true. That's pretty much it for the plot. There's some half-hearted attempt at a twist, but the characters are so hastily thrown together it's hard to give a shit about the Big Secret. Hell, most of the villains don't even seem to have names. The movie has exactly three things going for it. First, Stan Winston Studios did the creature effects, so while they are *extremely* sparingly used (these werewolves spend more time battling in daylight with guns than they do getting red in tooth and claw) they are pretty good. Skinwalker lycanthropes look more or less like meaner versions of Vincent from Beauty and the Beast, while for the most part still resembling the actor underneath. Second, the unintentional comedy is superbly executed (cough). Seeing Roswell's Jason Behr, for instance, trying to act like a badass is good for more than a few laughs. They also apparently forgot to hire extras for the good guy werewolves' small town home, which makes the gun battle there play out like outtakes from the end of Hot Fuzz (come to think of it, "It's hotter! It's fuzzier!" wouldn't be a terrible tag line.) Third, the cast is pretty much all TV semi-stars like Behr, Boston Legal's Rhona Mitra and Shark's Sarah Carter, and Canadian character actors like Elias Koteas, which means it should be easy to get everybody back together for the inevitable DTV sequel. Other than that it's a sloppy, weak affair. It's not scary, it's not innovative, and while there is a fair amount of walking there's almost no skin. Where have you gone, Joel Robinson? Geek nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
