Creatura

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.

I'm a sucker for monsters, so I decided to check out the first part of this mini-series, and I was marginally impressed. There were intelligent performances from the principles, despite the alteration of the original book's interesting WW2 origins of the creature, their limited dialogue and the stock disbelieving authority figure and local slimeball characters that show up in every other creature feature. Kim Cattrall is not only visually very pleasing, but she is a very skilled actress - hopefully part 2 will allow her to do more than the usual for a woman in a horror movie. As a rehash of a 50's creature-feature I found this fun, but not too taxing on the brain. Stan Winston's creature was nicely designed, but the scale White Shark puppet was incredible (speaking from the point of view of someone with zoological training)! Our titular Antihero moves nicely, though is still a bit too Black-Lagoon-ish. I knew the legs would be there, but I didn't expect them to grow in 20 seconds flat! My hopes are high, but this post-modern prometheus can only get worse when the army show up. I just hop e the Creature puts up a fight. So far, just for rubber work and nostalgic feelings, I'll give it 6 out of 10.

From the author of Jaws comes this so, so tale of a military experiment that splices the DNA of a human and a Great White shark.

Yes, predictably the resulting uncontrollable beastie eventually gets loose and subsequently goes about terrorising a small beach side community.

Craig T. Nelson and the ever sexy Kim Cattrall headline and equate themselves well in their respective roles whilst the rather splendid shark creature is supplied by the fx genius of Stan Winston (who was also responsible for the wonderful looking Pumpkinhead).

A fairly run of the mill affair overall, this does nonetheless contain a fair number of exciting scenes to lift it above the average mark although the ending it has to be said is sadly a particular let down!

Final verdict? Fellow fans of aquatic beastie films could certainly do a lot worse than to give this a go.

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.

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.