The Shadow Walkers

Shoreline entertainment, a company that regularly produces creature features yet can't get a commission from Syfy after yet, despite even The Asylum being commissioned to produce Syfy creature features, brings us another creature feature of roughly the quality implied by the description I just gave.

They've produced films like "Parasite" and "Stinger", they're distributed nonsense like "Blood Predator" and "Pray for Morning". Now there's this.

People find themselves in an underground building, without memories of how they got there and with super soldier rejects chasing after them; super soldiers that are afraid of light sometimes.

From there, well, its another alien clone type movie except for being much less competent than most. Considering how many Alien clones there actually are that's not exactly a good thing. But as an example, an older man is hanging by a rope. Other people try pulling him up and if you blink you'll miss when they drop the rope. Presumably the hanging man fell then since that character might not be mentioned again. If he was, well, see previous comment about his initial "fall".

But when a movie starts off with armed men staring blankly at masked invaders who promptly shoot them, well, you should know what you're about to watch isn't too likely to be great. Or tolerable.

Well I guess I'm a guy living in my mother's basement according to some "reviewer" (read 'writer' or 'director' or """actor""") because here I am to talk harshly about this film. To say that until you can write a plot and film a movie by yourself like these "filmmakers" did is laughable. Taking my friends to an abandon building after visiting a Halloween mask shop and taking whatever horrible digital videocamera I have and calling it "a movie" is possibly the worst injustice of all. To call this "filmmaking" is making even those who film Smokeless Ashtray commercials at 4AM sound bad.

My girlfriend picked this up at FYE last night and we threw it in the DVD player hoping for some cheesy horror fun. Were we wrong! When the one "reviewer" said this film was a work-in-progress I really hope the filmmakers will ship me a final version when they decide this POS is finished. The film really looks like it was shot with a $500 digital camcorder picked up at Circuit City with actors who aren't even laughingly bad. If this was pure cheese it would have been great but after laughing for about 15 minutes the joke wore thin. How long is this? 90 more minutes? The "plot" centers around a bunch of "scientists" who get locked in the bottom of a building with these mutated monsters - mutated by the Army in, well, horribly horribly bad "Army cameo." (I guess I can ring in on this having been in the Army for 12 years. Wait - let me guess - "it's low budget so what did you expect???") The big breasted females shed their white coats right away to show off their sexy Cami's and the guys mostly keep theirs on because I'm sure the low budget didn't pay for the guys to get their own sweet, silky Cami's. Almost as if reading off cue cards the main characters bicker at each other and I almost either laughed my ass off or busted a gut in sheer pain at the "acting." They start running from the Halloween masked mutated monsters with long finger nails as they try to evade death and...

And I don't know. I honestly couldn't make it through another second. We turned it off and put in something else, putting in something else - ANYTHING ELSE. What did I expect from this film??? I'm not bored with my life and trying to make myself feel better by writing here. I'm just shocked this cost $12 used. I'm harsh in my judgment only because the movie is so, so, so bad. So the actors, filmmakers, and such can come on here all you want and try to blast those who hated your film but get this - you made a HORRIBLE film.

Enjoy this fact. Get some friends and get some alcohol. Every time the film gets worse - DRINK. I think I'll invite some peeps over and try watching it that way. It'll be a lot more fun that way and we probably will be drunk eight minutes into the "film." Embrace the suck people cause this is certainly one of the worst films I've seen in a long, long time. Guess I'll be moving back in my mom's basement now! Time to move the boxes off that old moldy couch down there Mom!!!

UPDATE: I finally made it through the movie with a bunch of alcohol and a bunch of friends. It really was a stretch at 90 minutes but we actually had a GREAT time watching it. Is the film any different? No - it's still HORRIBLE. But it was a lot of fun watching the jock Army guy fight karate mutants with the 4 big-breasted scientists in tow. As a horror this is a HUGE failure - but as a Ed Wood-like comedy it was simply amazing and we had a GREAT time doing MST3K like dialogue along with drinking. We really decided that we want to do our own commentary to this film! Watch this with friends and with alcohol and this film bumps up from a one-star to a four-star like I'm doing right now. I am still planning to move back into my mother's basement any day now.

Some people make me mad when I see the reviews that they have on certain films. For instance all the people who have only said negative things about this film are just people who are bored with their lives so they must try and feel better by making the most negative comments about something else. Now although that may truly be how you feel, i think that you are not as smart as you think because you don't know anything about this film. To me this film is a low paid film, made by a young director who is not so experienced as a director or writer. Its a working progress assholes so don't be so judgemental. I bet half of you couldn't think of your own plot. And people saying how it is just a copy, i wanna see you write a film that has nothing to do with any other film created. But what I think is most disappointing is how everyone seems to not take into consideration the time and money management. along with the budget of paying the actors. So until you know everything it took to create this film. Shut your mouths and get a job and move out of your mother's basements.

That about sums it up, so rather than really reviewing much more, here are the high (low?) points:

In the stolen plot devices category:

1) Chemical gas knocking out genetics lab employees (who wake up with temporary memory loss): Resident Evil

2) Tedious dance across thin object bridging an abyssal drop while evading or escaping: The Poseidon Adventure (new one), The Fellowship of the Ring, most any action film with an elevator scene, and many others... (take your pick).

3) Immense facility to provide perfect settings for zombie confrontations and on which the world's safety from pandemic tragedy relies on containment of said facility: (entire Resident Evil franchise).

4) Somewhat sentient zombie-like antagonists that have very human memories and abilities, but still want to kill everyone: Every poorly-done A-Team variety zombie film ever made.

Other random poorly conceived or implemented ideas:

1) Doctor or Lab tech (white coat staff) wearing fishnet top.

2) General Death Star-like abyss of a "Genetic Containment Unit".

3) Blatantly stealing "You are one ugly Mother..." from Predator.

4) Having a survivor maintain a fist-fight with an obviously superior "infected" (or whatever you want to call it) mutated human who's saliva would only infect the survivor as he hits it.

5) Adding generic porn-film quality soundtrack by an 80's soundtrack band in an attempt to sound like Slipknot in Resident Evil or somehow appeal to a younger party crowd.

6) The very much cliché idea that Big Bad (not to mention always bungling) "Military Industrial Complex" is of course responsible for the inevitable mess of genetically engineered zombie hordes every time.

7) Use of the word "Prion" in the script in an attempt to impart some sense of intelligence or scientific reasoning.

8) Adding the genetic mutation of fangs and long, sharp claws to the film's antagonists, only to have them very carefully avoid using them in nearly attack every scene (presumably to avoid having to have makeup/effects re-apply them when they pop off/out).

I just created my IMDb profile just to comment this movie At first when I saw the cover of the DVD box, it looked like an interesting Resident Evil type movie (I like those movies even if we are invaded by those these days), so I bought it. Yep 10$ I'll never see again. When I watched the movie for the first time on my PC, I thought they had put the wrong movie on the DVD. I have one random question, why is there a picture of a girl on the cover? Anyways, I just couldn't believe it.

At first, as the movie starts, all meanings of "acting" disappears. It's hard to become absorbed in a movie where the characters are acting just like if they were playing in "Scary Movie". The main character, who's supposed to be an army men or something, doesn't know how to hold a shotgun coreclty and has a very mind buzzing/confusing way of fighting. Maybe I'm too used to seeing movies like "The Matrix" or Jet Lee movies, but I think there's a limit.

The visual effects and the editing are poor. I was sure it was a 90's horror movie inspired who's director's vision was highly inspired by Power Rangers, but then I saw on IMDb that it was a 2006 release. I was speechless. Come on, replay 5 times the same stunt in 60 diff angles with 15fps poor slow motion effects and fades is bad. I am sure the movie was filmed with a 200$ digital camera with a 5$ computer microphone and edited with Windows Movie Maker. No, I'm sorry, WMM can't make green screen effects, which were unaceptable for a 2006 production.

The music makes no sense with the actions that are presented. What's the deal with the terrific metal band that plays the music for the "action" scenes... The first song kinda sounded OK.

The sound effects are so cheesy. Some sounds were obviously directly taken from games and/or taken from a very common sound database. I'm sure I've heard some Starcraft sounds in there. The creatures' voice changing is hilarious.

The costumes and the make-up is laughable. The army related costumes are the best. Like I have these clothes at home in a closet we never open. The make-up is soooo outdated. They used the same type of make-up in the 1922 movie "Nosferatu" without the green. Personnaly, I wouldn't be so scared of weird green face monsters with plastic teeth.

The setting is (im running out of vocabulary). They managed to film almost the entire movie in a subterranean parking. I think this is pretty impressive, but sad.

If you want to rent a scary movie, stay as far as you can from this movie. If you want to rent a funny movie, jump on this one, its the best because it wasn't meant to be funny. If you want, you can actually make copies this film and sell them legally, because the government knows you won't make a penny out of it.