Review: Skinwalkers

Ok, this movie sucks. I could probably end the review right here, but I will elaborate so you know I'm not just hating the movie on principle.

I wanted to like this movie. Despite the fact that it reminds me of a lower budget and "werewolves only" version of Underworld, I still wanted to like this movie. It just let me down on all fronts except for creature effects, which were too few for my taste.

The acting is subpar (even Elias Koteas, veteran of such goodflix as The Prophecy, Apt Pupil, Gattaca, and many others). I'm not sure if I blame the material entirely, as the story and dialogue are wholey unoriginal, or if maybe the actors could have pull this farce up into decency with more effort. Nah, this thing would have sucked even with Oscar caliber actors in it. Which leads me to the writing.

The dialogue is stilted and cliche. You either have 2 dimensional cliche supernatural bikers spewing hyper-hostile psychotic drivel such as "Tell me when Varek, and they're all dead" as said thug points sawed off shotgun at tied up victim's head. Or you have 2 dimensional townies (who seem to be all in on hiding this child of prophecy) who are dull and all-american to a fault. The only people outside of these categories are the kid, his mother, and a couple of bad guys with brains. Unfortunately none of these characters do anything interesting either. The boy seems to have no spunk and cringes alot, the mom does about the same as she deals with learning that there are shape-shifters. And the few bad guys with brains, whell guess what its like they don't want to be bad guys but damnit they just want to love each other and be crazy werebeasts. Of course they will have to do some bad things to there own kind who don't want to be crazy werebeasts with them. Oh and this brings me to another point, this movies title.


I thought going in I mite be treated to a visual feast of cool shapeshifters. Since the title is "Skinwakers" not "Werewolf Civil War". I don't know about everyone else, but when you use a general term for shapeshifters, I kind of imagine I'll be seeing a variety of shifters, not just werewolves. The other problem with the title is that I also expected to see a large amount of shapeshifter action in this. There are precisely 2 scenes in the entire movie (one being protracted, but its still just one instance and mostly at the end) where these folks actually go wolfman. The rest of the time it just seems to be a territory dispute between a biker gang and some townies. It was like an episode of the t.v. show "Renegade" with werwolves in it.

"We call ourselves Skinwalkers, you would call us Werewolves". Really? Cause I would call Skinwalkers shapeshifters, and werewolves I would call...um...werewolves. They could have at least given themselves a proper noun sounding name for what they call themselves, one that doesn't conjure up incorrect expectations of this flick.

Ok now to my 2 final points. The creature effects in this are interesting. Mainly because they go with the classic wolfman appearance, so think more like wolf and caveman combo (think wolfman from Monster Squad). I haven't seen that in a werewolf flick in awhile. Lately they all turn into something like The Howling. And the creature effects were good. They didn't look crummy or poor, and they gave the werewolves at least a small amount of uniqueness from all the others I've seen lately (though they still sucked).

And my final point. This movie rips its ending off from either Terminator, T2, or Cobra. The final show down is like a timewarp back to some bad 80's action movies, except with werewolves. So thats it. I've tried to be as objective as I could, but this movie is lame and no amount of fairness will cure that. Its got poor plot, poor dialogue, actors that weren't used to best effect, an overly complex plot, and ALOT of cliches. So watch it at your own peril.

Jesse A.K.A. Baron Ironfury

Trailer