Director: Jem Gerrard
Year: 2018
Country: Canada
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Creature Feature
Plot:
Participating in a scavenger hunt, a group of teens unwittingly releases a giant warthog-like creature that stalks a group of friends attending their high-school reunion at the school years later, forcing the class president and her entourage to fight off the deadly, bloodthirsty creature.
Review:
This one ended up being an absolute blast of an effort and had a lot to really like about it. One of the biggest selling points here is the incredibly enjoyable atmosphere created throughout here. The abandoned school where it all takes place is a perfectly creepy setting, offering all the gloom of a darkened, left-behind location covering the bleachers or the floors, the broken doors and walls with the endless corridors that work even better with the reunion in the gym which is full of all the neon lighting and decorations which all come together into a fun overall setting.
There's also the fact that this one features the gloriously practical giant warthog creature that runs wild which gives this one a great feel. It's imposing and quite creepy, managing to score rather nicely not only with its design but also the ferocity of the creature's actions as it leads into some rather fun attack scenes here. Due to the unexpected nature of its appearance at the school, these scenes of the creature running loose offer up a lot to like from the opening ambush on the pranksters that starts this one to the first attacks on the outside of the party and the first instances of the creature being on the premises during their party that she tries to hide from everyone offers up the kind of rampaging creature feature action that works nicely.
Once the full extent of the creature is revealed to all, a spectacular series of bodily dismemberments against the rest of the patrons at the party in a full-on frenzy of severed limbs, blood-spray, and total chaos that turns it into a fantastic action scene and setting the stage for the final half where it turns into the relentless series of confrontations with the survivors not only realizing the creatures' origins and intent but also getting into some highly enjoyable tactics to outwit the creature. Combined with the fine blood and gore through the kills involved here, this one offers enough to like to hold out over its few minor flaws.
The main problem here is the series of cliches utilized in the storyline which make it quite obvious what's going on. The idea of keeping it hidden from the party guests is completely nonsensical as that's criminally negligent of keeping them in harm's way against the creature and simply keeping the running storyline of her need for perfection to continue. Still putting people in danger to allow the creature the opportunity to kill as many as it does during the big massacre when it didn't need to had it simply dropped the idea of running into these cliches when it didn't need to.
The other flaw is the rather confusing nature of including the slow-motion captures of the attack scenes showing the layout of the scene with the creature interacting with the bodies and seeing their reactions, a rather irritating tactic when it's constantly repeated during each of the big scenes that the setup is featured. Alongside the rather curious nature of bringing up the asthma condition of the creatures' human host that never gets utilized making its inclusion a question mark in that sense, there's not a whole lot really wrong here.
Overview: ***.5/5
Highly enjoyable and entertaining creature feature, there's a lot to like here in this brand of cheesy genre fare while only really having some expected flaws that aren't really too detrimental overall. Those with an interest in this style or are fans of this particular genre fare will have the most to like here while most others out there turned off by its approach should heed caution.
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