Director: Stewart Sparke
Year: 2016
Country: United Kingdom
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Creature Feature
Plot:
After a devastating diving accident, a disgraced marine biologist takes a piece of the specimen she discovered on the trip home with her in secret and tries to study it, but when the creature hatches and develops a bizarre symbiotic relationship with her it starts to take over her mind to a dangerous degree.
Review:
This was a rather fun and generally enjoyable genre effort. One of the better features of this one is the solid psychological build-up that merges quite nicely with its creature feature origins. The initial route it takes involving her traumatic diving accident and resulting job loss afterward sets up her determination to keep the creature she found and study it as a way of getting a sense of retribution from the company that let her go, and it also serves nicely to develop the reasoning to understand the relationship she forms with the hatched creature. Bonding with it not only naturally with the normal interactions they have in the basement where she studies it but the symbiotic one as a result of the chemical spill they share lets everything come together quite well into a spiraling circle of delusion and madness the longer she keeps it hidden in the basement.
That shared chemical bond they share allows the film to turn away from the psychological spiral into more overt graphic territory. As a result of the series of dreams and hallucinations that come about due to the creatures’ influence on her, the aggressive behavioral ticks and aborted attempts at carrying out violent tendencies against those she knows start to signal that change fine enough before the genuine murders she carries out. Bringing about everything from abductions of those who try to separate the two to those who stumble upon it and force her to kill to keep it secret to straightforward scenes leading victims directly to it, this lets the cheesy creature effects of the prosthetic tentacle and the fine design for the beast in full all drive this together for a lot to like here.
There isn’t much to dislike with this one but it does have some minor factors against it. The main factor with the film is the general lack of action in the first half where it’s spent more on the build-up of their relationship than on letting the creature go full throttle. Giving this a pretty understandable berth since there's some point to going for the psychological touch, there’s still no reason for the length of time it takes before the creature starts to influence her to get going with the criminal spree. On top of that, there’s also a rather large problem with the finale where the film tends to go on longer than it should trying to keep going with a series of twists that try to tack on the surprise endings which aren’t required here. As well as some instances of the low-budget limitations being apparent, these hold this one down overall.
Overview: ***.5/5
A rather strong psychological-tinged creature feature, there’s quite a lot to like with this one that manages to hold it up from the minor drawbacks that do appear with this one. Those who enjoy this style and presentation, appreciate indie fare in this style, or are fans of the creative crew will have the most to like here while most others out there might want to heed caution with it.
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