Al borde del terror

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, too, have read the novel "Watchers" many times. It is a masterpiece of story-telling by Dean Koontz about how love transcends all boundaries - including that of species. Even the "monster" was given a soul that pierced the horror. By the end of the book you knew that animals think and feel and that a dog is more than just cute.

The movie "Watchers" offers no clue that anyone involved has even read this book. We need another teen slasher flick like we need another Linda Tripp. The dog could give acting lessons to the rest of the cast. Simply awful and I am embarrassed for Mr. Koontz.

However, two years later, it seems as if someone else thought that this novel deserved better. "Watchers II" - although unable to hold a candle to the book - at least came closer to the original storyline. Decidedly not Oscar material, "Watchers II" is, however, at least 47,000 times more watchable than it's predecessor.

Final words - read the book and open your heart.

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.

If you went into watching this movie thinking it was going to be an exacting adaptation of the great novel, well, you apparently haven't learned your lesson. Because this is almost never the case, especially movies from this era.

I will judge it for what it is: a B-horror starring an early Corey Haim, still in his prime. There is plenty to like about the film, including some of the gore and terror sequences. Corey Haim's acting is still spot on and sharp (on of his last), and the movie does flow very well. It is an easy film to digest. There are frights aplenty, if you are prone to it. If you are a critical horror fan, you'll find the gore to be well-done, and the film amusing - so long as you don't judge it by the standards of the book.

Having said all that, there are some down sides to it: Some highly inane, and poorly written dialog at times. Also, the film itself, could stand to be spruced up. They could've also tightened up some of the editing.

As far as B-horror fare goes, I recommend it.

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.