Watchers - gnadenlos gejagt

Watchers. An excellent, humorous, and poignant novel. Watchers, the movie. Everything I just said, only opposite. Corey Haim plays Travis, who, in the novel, was a fourty year old man with a horrible curse. The curse is that anyone who seems to get close to him dies. Not only does the movie not touch on this (the major theme of the book), but it downplays all major themes of the novel. It doesn't even come close to anything that made the novel so wonderful, which is why Watchers, the "movie", is one you should miss.

When I saw this movie I certainly did not think it was an award winning movie or all that good, but it was okay. It passed the time, had an interesting enough story, add some more gore and kills and it might have been a really good horror movie. Like I said in my summary though, I have heard from many people the book is better, but then when have you not heard that cry when a book is made into a movie. This one is about a boy who finds a dog, what could be more touching than that. In fact I would have to say a bit to much time in the film is used exploring their budding friendship rather than on the super creature that is now coming for said boy and dog. Which there is a creature of super power homing in on the boy and his dog, killing those that get in its way. The boy finally finds out about this and he and the dog and I think the mother go into a cabin and have a final showdown with said monster. You will not get to see said monster all that much and there could have been a few more kills or something, but for the most part I found the movie entertaining. I would compare it to another Corey Haim horror movie "Silver Bullet", both are horrors that need more horror, but both can be called okay...just kind of fluffy.

I rented this movie because I thought (and still think) that the book was a masterpiece. The book is still on my top five novels ever list. So when I rented the film I expected it to fail in comparision. But not on this level. Travis is a Kid? I mean come ON. In the book the guy was ex-delta with plenty of tricks up his sleeve. In the movie he's a sixteen or so year old kid who seemed to be taught everything about traps and guns by the age of 10 when his dad died. I'm from the south and I don't know half the crap the kid was taught. Hell i was shooting guns at seven sure. 22s. BB guns. Not even a very entertaining movie. If you want to see a Dean Koontz book that made a good movie watch Phantoms.

*****/10

I'm a great fan of Koontz, and thought this might be an adaptation worth watching. I admit that due to the complexity of most his books, with all its subtlety, it is difficult to make a perfect adaptation, but this movie just barely made as a mediocre production. In an effort to make the movie 'cute' instead of the full-fledged horror it should be, it concentrates so much on the dog and its antics, but leaves us to imagine the monster for the most part. Given that the monster is at least as smart and complex as the dog, to see it reduced to simply a killing machine was a waste. And I still prefer the book ending to the movie ending - at least it made more sense and left one feeling a bit sad at the monster's demise instead of gloating over it.

A lot of people do not like this movie. In fact, almost all the reviews here are negative. The problem seems to be that a lot of loyal fans of the book were angered by all the changes made in this movie adaption. I had the same type of feeling after I saw "The General's Daughter." "The General's Daughter" left a lot of stuff from the book out and changed lots of stuff too. I found myself disliking the movie barley a half an hour into it. Luckily I have yet to read Dean Koontz's book "Watchers" and that is probably one of the reasons why I liked it so much. I was able to watch it on it's own and not compare it to the book and in my opinion it is a fine little horror movie.

Corey Haim wasn't as bad as I thought he would be. After I had seen the hideous "Fever Lake," which is on the IMDB's bottom 100 list where it deserves to be, I became cautious not to rent anything with Corey Haim for a long time. Then I found out Michael Ironside was in it and decided to risk the dollar and thirteen cents. Michael Ironside was excellent as always. He seems to be at his best when he is playing villains, like he did in "Total Recall" and "Highlander 2."

The film is well directed and it moves at a very fast pace. The monster isn't that bad. You don't really see much of it thought, other then a flash of hair, or and arm coming out of the roof or something. You start to see the whole thing during the ending climax at the cabin, which by the way I thought was pretty exciting.

All in all, I enjoyed this movie. It is fast-paced and it doesn't fall apart at the end like many horror movies do. It doesn't try to insult the viewer either with a dumb twist ending. Not that their bad, we just don't need them all the time. Michael Ironside was good as always and his scenes are the best parts of the movie. I think tomorrow I'll rent "Watchers II." I give this 8/10