Totem

I knew I was in trouble, when the production company for this movie showed absolutely zero production value trailers, as "coming soon" attractions. Of course, it can be said that TOTEM is a thinking person's movie. It left me thinking "why did I spend good money renting this?" I also thought: "IMDb will need to add zero to their ratings scale, if more movies like this are made." The paper thin plot involves 6 teens (inexplicably) drawn to this cabin in the middle of nowhere. They can't escape because of some invisible shield, as the viewer is informed through a very talky script. In fact, that's what most of this movie is, talk, talk and more talk. The fleeting scenes where any action occurs, seems almost coincidental. The special effects look like something performed in a grammar school production. Good grief, these kids are dull. They're NOT even nubile, which seems to be a prerequisite for teen/horror flicks! Kind viewer beware of the "TOTEM"-Of course, I mean the movie- not the object of it. You have been warned.

I'm not entirely sure what happened to Full Moon Pictures in the late 90s. While I don't think you could ever accuse Charles Band & Co of highbrow, professional pictures, there was a genuine love for the craft there, and movies like Puppet Master & Subspecies would grow into moderately successful little franchises. By the end of the decade these projects had been replaced by rubbish Roger Corman would have raised an eyebrow at, such as today's topic, Totem.

Indeed, director David DeCoteau actually started life as a protege of Corman. He's actually got a fairly solid resume of B-Movies under his belt. Ok he's not Spielberg but I'd unknowingly seen a few of his movies and found them various stages of passable to good fun. This was apparently something he made as part of a contractual obligation and shot it in 4 days. It shows.

We open with 6 good looking young strangers who have mysteriously found themselves transported to a dilapidated cabin in the woods. They can only move so far outside before an invisible barrier stops them. We meet them through the eyes of Alma (Marissa Tait) who is first introduced to talkative Paul (Jason Faunt) who presents jock Len (Eric W. Edwards), brooding Native American Robert (Tyler Anderson), schoolgirl Tina (Alicia Lagano) and the mysterious Roz (Sacha Spencer) they argue a bit, before finding a mysterious totem pole style structure carved out of granite depicting 3 monstrous figures.

It isn't long before they find themselves embroiled in an ancient ritual designed to sacrifice them to bring the creatures on the totem back to life to destroy the world. Or something.

You see, there isn't an awful lot of plot here, not that makes any great sense anyway. It's an incredibly short movie, with under an hour of actual footage if you don't include the 2 minutes of The Vikings hilariously presented out of context. I genuinely wouldn't be entirely surprised if they had been set a remit of "Charles Band likes monsters under 3 feet tall, here's 3 puppets, make up the rest as you go"

The puppets aren't even good, and in a lot of scenes are clearly just the actor holding onto them and thrashing around. Incredibly they choose to focus up close on their faces in the (overly long) introduction, letting as know that the monsters aren't even worth waiting for.

I'm not gonna pretend the acting is good, but given that I'm not sure they weren't making lines up on the spot, I'm not sure I can hold that much of it against the young cast. I've seen Jason Faunt do quite well in the role in Power Rangers he'd go onto (seriously, it's one of the most watchable series of that) and Tait has a fairly solid resume (even if it includes the equally crap Witchhouse) and I was sure I was familiar with Edwards, but given this is his only credit, apparently not. Curiously, despite portraying a Native American, Tyler Anderson has an interesting accent that sounds more European to me. Sadly there's not enough written about him online to suss his actual heritage.

Totem does a lot of bad things, but at least it doesn't overstay its welcome, so I won't overdo it either. This is a pretty bad movie. It's rushed, cheap, doesn't make a lot of sense and generally has nothing you want to see. By all accounts the director himself acknowledges this.

In TOTEM, a group of strangers -3 women, 3 men- find themselves in a remote cabin, not knowing how they got there. The area around the cabin is surrounded by a force field, keeping them penned inside. Soon, the relic of the title is discovered.

Since this is a story by Charles Band, the tiny creatures on the totem spring to life, causing mayhem. The rest is sort of a dunderheaded version of THE EVIL DEAD. It's also excruciatingly dull, as insufferable characters utter nonsensical dialogue while waiting for their doom.

Hardcore lovers of Band's PUPPET MASTER series might enjoy this, while others will throw heavy objects at their viewing screens! This movie is a rubber mallet to the forehead...

This movie is about 6 people who are mysteriously drawn to a small cabin out in the woods. They're all strangers to each other. Once at the cabin, they find that an energy barrier prevents them from traveling more than a few hundred feet in any direction. They also find a cemetery with a sort of totem pole in it. Actually it doesn't look anything like a totem pole, it looks like three dolls on a vertical shelf, but I suppose "Totem" makes a much scarier title than "Three Dolls On A Vertical Shelf Unit". Once night falls, one of the characters turns up dead, and everyone suspects another character of killing her, but he can't remember doing it. Then a little demonic Muppet comes running into the cabin, and they manage to drive it away. Another character turns up dead, another demonic Muppet drags off a corpse, and our characters figure out that three of them are to kill the other three for some "mysterious purpose". Probably the most unbelievable thing that occurs in this movie is when they finally figure out the "mysterious purpose". One of the girls is dragged off by a demonic Muppet, and the other is lying helpless on the floor, and then we just cut to an old Viking movie. There are flames superimposed on the lower part of the screen. A narrator explains to us that in times of old, there were some bad guys who were really powerful and nearly took over the earth. I guess we're supposed to assume that these demon dolls in the movie are those bad guys. This whole thing will just leave you shaking your head. I mean, did the demons make this up as a sort of video informational packet for their intended victims to view before their demise? And since such a big deal is made of telling up that no one has been in this cabin for 100 years, I guess we can assume there's no TV for her to watch this on. So did they just beam the video into her head, complete with extremely grainy image quality?

I won't spoil the thrilling ending for you. Basically, this is a zero-budget movie with young actors who probably haven't been in much else, and they're not helped by a lousy script (half of the dialog is just nonsense, and it's a very dialog-heavy movie). And then there are the special effects - demonic Muppet dolls. As if everything else wasn't bad enough, these guys are just comical. Then you've got one of the actors who barely speaks English. He speaks paragraph after paragraph of dialog, and it's painful trying to figure out what he's saying. There's a scene where a girl is unconscious and she's mumbling a few random syllables, which the "English as a second language" guy translates. The humorous part is that she mumbles "umph, um-mm, uhhh" and he manages to translate each one of her syllables into a couple of sentences. That must be one extremely efficient language she's using. There's also the odd habit that most of the characters seem to share of using the F word in every sentence. I personally couldn't care less how much people swear, but it's so overused here that it's humorous.

I really can't criticize the movie too heavily. It's a no-budget cheapie probably filmed in a week, and for that it gives you exactly what you'd expect. A little bit of atmosphere, a lot of bad acting, a really slow moving plot, some utterly ridiculous moments, and a cute girl or two. Okay, so maybe the whole movie qualifies as a really ridiculous moment. I still found it vaguely enjoyable. Let me put it this way: I'd rather sit through this again than watch Lara Croft: Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life.

This is the prime example of something so terrible it's funny. The premise is six teenagers are transported to a cabin surrounded by an invisible barrier and one by one they are picked off by little creatures.

What makes is so bad is the acting, the plot, the "special effects" which look like they are made by special people, and the completely ridiculous overall tone. At one point there are only two left in the cabin, a pretty little blonde thing and a foreign boy (think tall, dark, and stupid) and they're talking about how they are going to die and suddenly they start making out. Then, just as quickly, they stop, and return to discussing their imminent demise.

Also, the "invisible barrier" is never really explained, nor focused on.

Overall, this is just a horrible, horrible movie. The only people I recommend it to are teenagers looking for entertainment on a slow night.