It Waits

Casual channel surfing this morning-and ended up watching this On SciFi Channel. I was kind of impressed- The main character's angst and predicament and her guts in confronting the bad stuff reminded me of Siggy Weaver's Ripley character. I liked the setting and the Ranger stuff. I liked Dr Riverwind(for all of 5 minutes). The character parts of the story were more interesting than the actual "horror movie" stuff. Actually made me care enough to sweat out the action sequences. I was curious who the writer was and when I saw Richard Matheson it confirmed my suspicions that this script was not dreamed up in a frat house over a vat of vodka jello shots but was the work of a decent writer. I thought Cerina did a great job in her portrayal.

And Hoppy ROCKS! He and Jonesie from Alien should get together someday( over vodka jello shots) and trade war-stories.

The lonely forest ranger Danielle St. Claire (Cerina Vincent) works alone in Tower 19 of the Forestry Department of a remote National Park. Danny is grieving the loss of her best friend Julie Cassidy (Miranda Frigon) and is tormented by the feeling of guilty, since she was responsible for the death of her girlfriend. While driving Julie's car after drinking in a bar, she had an accident but she did not assume that she was driving. When a group of students releases a demon trapped in a mystical cave, the creature attacks tourists nearby her tower and later her boyfriend Justin Rawley (Dominic Zamprogna). Without communication or means of transportation, Danny fights to survive while the monster is attracted by her sadness.

"It Waits" is a reasonable low budget movie that gives the sensation of déjà vu since it uses many clichés of the horror genre. Further, the demon is a rip-off of The Creeper of "Jeepers Creepers" and when the creature attacks Danny, it recalls the famous scene of "Alien" and Lt. Ripper. Cerina Vincent is extremely sexy and has a good performance, attracting the creature not because of her beauty but her pain and misery for the loss of her close friend. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "À Espera do Mal" ("Waiting for the Evil")

Really not a bad flick, but hardly a novel experience. We've got several clichéd main characters trapped in the deep Canadian woods. Great locations. A monster on the loose. A lead actress (Cerina Vincent) with a tank top. Good cinematography. Even a lovable parrot that somehow acts like a homing pigeon.

Oh, did I mention the MOR soundtrack? For some reason, this picture feels the need to break into song every so often. We get music by Melanie Monroe (?) designed to underline the poignancy of the moments...with a sledge hammer.

Meanwhile, the monster flies around making Predator-like sounds. Why, oh why, has that noise become such a horror movie staple? A passable time waster, but it with a little work it might have been so much more.

How many times have we been down this path before? This low-budget production is a basic run-of-the-mill monster on the loose in some backwoods. A demonic creature (of negative energy) from Native American Indian folklore. But you can't argue that it doesn't deliver what it achieves to do. However it's not particularly exciting in its durably slick execution, despite sensational location choices and the best efforts from its dependably committed cast. I had a hard time believing the very beautiful Cerina Vincent in the lead role as a park ranger, but that's not taking anything away from her performance because she does carry the film. Her character is a complex one, albeit rather clichéd in that she's exorcising her own demons and drowning her sorrows with alcohol. Her boyfriend ranger is played by Dominic Zaprogna and he brings a confident likability to the role. For comedy relief a talking exotic parrot is chucked in. While it can labour a bit, there are some eventful moments of suspense with the creature toying with its victims (mainly at the back-end involving Vincent's character) and when it decides to finish the job it does leave a bloody splatter with jolts few and far. Some instances seem laughable though. The camera-work has numerous monster POV shots and that frenetic hand held photography shows up. The monster FX is decently captured and does look impressive when we see it in full sight. Standard, but modest creature-feature entertainment.

"If its coming after me. How do I kill it. "

This movie is the reason why I scour the video store shelves for low budget horror flicks. Most of the time, of course, I am sadly disappointed but other times - like this - I am pleasantly surprised. Considering Richard Christian Matheson wrote the story I was fairly confident, although it is a rather pedestrian story about an ancient Indian demon, inadvertently released from a cave, wreaking havoc on a mountainside. A female park ranger, wrestling with her own demons, has to find the ability to battle this monster and save herself. The horror elements were standard and fairly well done and the script, while spotty, was okay. "It Waits" is decent horror fare, better than some of the dreck that is getting released in movie theaters.