Creature

Plot

An amphibious shark-like monster terrorizes an abandoned secret military base and the people who live on the island it is located on. A marine biologist, as well as several other people, try to stop it before it is too late...

Cast

Craig T. Nelson, Kim Cattrall, Blu Mankuma, Giancarlo Esposito, Megalyn Echikunwoke and a very wasted Colm Feore star.

Verdict

Let's be fair here, you can't expect too much from a shark feature especially these days. Scyfy have officially killed sharks for me, from multi headed sharks to ghost shark to snow shark to sand shark to flying sharks to toxic sharks to zombie sharks and beyond!

Creature presents us with something that's essentially a man shark, half man, half shark, all pretty terrible.

Now the first thing I need to acknowledge is that this isn't technically a movie, it's a two part limited series. The thing is, that was their first and arguably biggest mistake. In no universe did this need to be three hours! It's excessive runtime is very very damaging and turns a mediocre creature feature into a boring needlessly drawn out mess.

The cast are fine and I certainly see what they were going for, but it looks ugly, the writing is poor and it all feels like a low budget made for television movie but one that has no business being as long as it is.

Rants

Is it just me or did Kim Cattrall have a considerably better career than she by all rights should have being that she's really not a very good actress. Look at everything she's been in, the decade after decade and she's always had her place in the industry yet I don't remember seeing a roll where I thought wow she nailed it there!

The Good

Solid cast Megalyn Echikunwoke

The Bad

The "Creature" looks naff Some weak writing FAR too long Just uninspired and generic throughout.

Grab some popcorn and skittles 'cause this movie is epic! Creature is one of the worst movies I have ever seen, and as such I consider it one of the best. Nothing speaks to a true B-rated sci-fi fanatic like government cover-ups, outlandish monsters, strained family ties, and the manipulation the human genome. And, Ladies and Gentlemen let me tell you: this movie does not just speak, it sings. I would recommend this film to anyone who consider themselves a connoisseur of the B-rated genre. Yes, Creature is about 3 hours long (with commercials) but the ending is pure poetry and very worth the wait. Creature is a classic cross-section of the epic sci-fi; as such I recommend that it be viewed at 2:00am - no earlier.

I recommend doing several loads of laundry, and then folding it while watching this movie. I actually don't mean that in a bad way. It is a mildly entertaining, if overly long, 3 hours or so.

As you can tell from the very mixed reviews, whether one likes this movie might depend on your mood and your willingness to suspend disbelief and take Creature on its own terms. As other reviewers have noted, this is Peter Benchley ripping off himself in subpar manner. On the other hand, the creature is kind of cool, there are some really nifty sets, including abandoned tunnels, abandoned laboratories, abandoned military facilities, foggy swamps, and mysterious, shark tooth-shaped Islands silhouetted against the full moon, and for the most part the acting is more than adequate. Taking it for what it is, I would give it 5 1/2 or 6 Stars.

Note, regarding the DVD: As of this writing, 2019, Amazon was selling a 2-disc DVD set released by Olive Films, for around $12. The picture is excellent, surprisingly detailed and crisp, and presented in the original 1:78 widescreen. The sound is also very clear. Unfortunately, and unforgivably, there is no closed captioning. Not surprisingly, there are no special features. I do like the fact that it is presented with parts 1 and 2 each on its own DVD (labeled Night 1 and Night 2, which is kind of neat), so compression ratios are fine. I also appreciated the fact that they presented each part in its entirety, including opening and closing credits, unlike, for instance, the commonly found DVD release of Salem's Lot, which eliminated closing credits of part 1 and opening credits of part 2, combining it into one feature.

If you need a good laugh, here's the comedy for you.

Let's start with the characters, which are all stereotypes or over-the-top whack jobs. After 25 years of not doing anything, an escaped mutant beast finally decides to eat something, so mutilated corpses start floating to the surface on the beaches of a Caribbean island. No sea monster movie is complete without the dumb local cop who ignores a scientist's warnings about the problem. The idiot teen angst son who just keeps getting in his Daddy's hair, needs to be put on time out. Local voodoo dancers that look like they're practicing for a primal scream contest. Military with enough fire power to blast the Western Hemisphere to rubble, but if brains were dynamite, they wouldn't have enough to blow their noses.

But the best is the paranoid beach comber ex-scientist (who didn't age at all in 25 years). I love his "under the canoe" playhouse, where he stares wide-eyed at anything he sees, and whines incoherent gibberish hysterically.

There really was a decent original idea for a story, but the director throws so much extra stuff at you, it's buried under a Caribbean Sea of dead-end sub plots and meaningless banter. The story suggests an evil secret involving the creature, but instead of exploring this, you'll just see pointless padding, like the romance with an island beauty liking the knucklehead kid. The two scientists rekindling their dead marriage serves no purpose either.

I pity Craig T. Nelson, who took the thing seriously, and tried to make the most of his character. The director is to blame for the weak construction of the film which ends up being unintentionally funny. There are a few good moments involving the creature, but not enough. Most of the time you'll see the increasingly obvious red dye to simulate an attack, or the beast standing two feet away from a victim staring dumbly. Entertaining stuff, but as comedy, not horror.

I rented this in the local video store since it was based on a Peter Benchley (Jaws) book. I didn't know it was a mini TV series but once it was started, it kept me in front of the TV till the end. Craig T. Nelson delivers an excellent performance and it has got some pretty decent creature effects by Stan Winston. The plot is somewhat like Deep Blue Sea. The Navy performs experiments on Dolphins but something goes wrong and one of the test subject escapes. It reappears 25-30 years later (how old do dolphins get??) and starts spreading terror. Better than your average action movie, I rated it 6/10.