Tooth and Nail

The apocalypse has occurred, only not due to nuclear war or global warming-we just ran out of oil. Anyways, A group of survivors find a girl(Rachel Miner), and take her in. Unfortunately, they have also found themselves under siege thanks to a gang of cannibals (which include Vinnie Jones and Michael Madsen) who look like they just walked off the set of "The Road Warrior."

Best described as "The Hills Have Eyes" meets a "Mad Max" knock off, "Tooth & Nail" is a mixed bag that can best be described a a movie that doesn't live up to it's full potential. While the acting is good (Who knew Rider Strong would turn out to be such a good actor?), and the kills and gore are impressive, the movie suffers from some poorly done twists. Okay, the twist at the films conclusion isn't too bad, but the other twist in the film can be seen miles away.

Another problem is the way that it wastes Michael Madsen, Vinnie Jones, and Robert Carradine in their roles. Watching the movie, you feel like you should have gotten more of these guys. A shame really.

In the end, "Tooth & Nail", in spite of a few scares, some good acting, and nice gore, is hurt by a sense of wasted potential. It's not a horrible move, or even a bad one, it's just an okay movie.

Tooth and Nail is yet another film handling the idea of the majority of the population being killed off and the rest living in a barren wasteland. There are plenty of these films about, and most of them are better than this one as Mark Young's film adds nothing new to the concept and as such is really disappointing. The film does actually benefit from a very well done atmosphere - most of it takes place at night and the director constantly enforces the idea that the central characters are in a hopeless situation. However, the good things about it end there. As mentioned, the film takes place in the future and we focus on a group of people (lead by a college professor) that have holed up in an old abandoned hospital. Of course they plan to rebuild civilisation from the ground up; but their plan hits a stumbling block when they come across another gang of survivors. This gang calls themselves 'The Rovers' and just happen to be cannibals. Naturally, our group find themselves on the menu and have to fight to survive.

Mark Young's screenplay is really weak. The characters are all non-entities and many lines of dialogue are awful, which doesn't exactly help. The film does not feature even nearly enough tension or suspense and spends far too much time focusing on bickering within the central group; which is at times painful since none of the lead actors can act. Even when the film does start to feature a bit more action; it's not well filmed or exciting. Most of the cast is made up of unknown performers, but there are three exceptions, in the form of Robert Carradine, Vinnie Jones and Michael Madsen; who have small and rather ineffective roles. There are a few gory scenes in the film, but nothing to write home about. It's really a shame that the film turned out like this as while there are a lot of post-apocalyptic films about; this type of film can be really well done if handled correctly. The ending is fairly good and the little twist at the end is nice; but overall this is not good horror and represents yet another underwhelming entry in Afterdark's '8 Films to Die For' collection.

In the barren landscape of a post-apocalyptic America, a small group of survivors (largely teenagers/young adults, conveniently) find themselves up against a group of cannibals who kill seemingly at random and who seem to only come out at night.

Good news: Robert Carradine is always watchable in his underused character, and character actors Vinnie Jones and Michael Madsen are fun if completely underutilized. Some nice, messy kills and a few scenes with passable suspense.

Bad News: So much potential, the film tries in it's final minutes to be more clever and intelligent than it is, forgetting the cardinal rule to horror movies in this category: Stay tongue in cheek, stop pretending like the audience hasn't seen this done before...and much better, too.

I'm astonished that some people are rating this movie a 9 or 10. It really just isn't that good. Sadly, it had all the tools to be successful, including an interesting premise, a wealth of experienced acting talent, a great filming location, and convincing effects (although this being 2008 you can't really give much credit for the latter anymore).

Unfortunately, they still managed to screw it up. The villains' actions didn't make much sense, neither did the protagonists', for that matter. They consistently made really stupid decisions, presumably to create tension and a "stalking killers" feel, except the killers weren't scary. The "twist" was predictable and lame. Dialog was passable, but nothing to write home about. I did feel the actors all delivered the best performance they could with what they had, but there just wasn't much to work with.

The script really needed a couple of critical rewrites before going into production, I actually laughed out loud at the cliché "dramatic face painting in preparation for war" scene near the end. The ending is frankly boring and unsatisfying. Instead of this movie, you could just watch Mad Max and Doomsday while completely hammered, then take the resulting mess of memories and remove anything entertaining or intriguing, it will be the same experience but far more fun.

Tooth and Nail took on a completely different aspect than some other cannibal movies for me, besides Silence of the Lambs of course, and I think it is possibly the most cunning of the 2nd Annuals, Borderland following extremely close behind, or maybe tying. Not too many things were wrong with this film for me except that it was kind of out of the blue how cannibals decided to raid this hospital which supposedly had people in it, and that Michael Madsen did not have as big of a role as I thought he was going to. However, the movie entertains and has a nice execution. It is really exciting and fun to watch. The characters are not really done that well, but they are passable and the script, while lazy, is still decent. I just had a blast watching it. It is not a masterpiece, and never could be quite honestly, but the whole premise is very enjoyable. Tooth and Nail is actually though tied for my favorite Afterdark Horrorfest film overall so far, so it's definitely worth the watch, in my honest opinion.