Splintered

SPLINTERED is a near unwatchable shot-in-the-woods slice of British horror, not to be confused with the excellent American horror flick SPLINTER, in which Shea Wigham fought a horrible monster at a gas station. This one has almost no story, just a bunch of unlikeable characters travelling out into the Welsh woods where inevitably they meet their deaths in various unpleasant ways.

It's the kind of story which is clichéd beyond belief, not that there's much in the way of story to begin with. The big reveal made me groan inwardly, thinking "not another one of THOSE stories". There's little to no bloodshed here, and little in the way of atmosphere or suspense either. The characters are very thinly drawn and none of them are in the least bit likable or interesting. It doesn't help that the cast members have been drawn from WATERLOO ROAD and the like. Looking back, I can't think of a single reason to bother watching this one.

You know it's one thing to make people believe one thing and then reveal to them that it might be something completely different. Or is it? But anyway, this movie tries to be clever in many respects par the dialogue and character development. It's all been said and done before and one twist or another do not change the fact, that it is poorly realized.

Of course, this is low budget, so I'm not gonna talk about the effects (that seem decent enough for a movie like this), but it still could have done with a few rewrites. If you haven't watched Teenagers in peril movies, you might find something here for you, but there are so many other (good) movies out there, that you could be watching instead. I hope the filmmakers can come up with a better one, next time around.

An pretty average, modern Werewolf movie. Atmospheric in parts but the content is less stimulating. Worth watching I guess but the contents are already slipping from my mind. Too many better movies and more substantial examples, to get your teeth in (excuse the pun).

When it started out, it looked like it was going to be one of those movies where a monster chases some unlikable character through the woods. That's what the description made it sound like. Instead, a little way in it becomes some sort of gothic horror story about a werewolf? A crazy guy? Something like that. Most of it takes place in this dilapidated old...church? Insane asylum? Jail? The characters are thin and unlikable. The dialogue is bad. The story is meandering and makes no sense. It tries to tackle a serious issue to give it weight but it's so clumsy and ham-handed about it that the whole thing falls flat. Mostly, it's just boring. I spent the last half hour or so just waiting for it to be over already. Was that the end? No, it's still going. Oh, I guess it's finally over now. This is just a boring waste of time.

I saw the UK Premier in Manchester. Due to a technical hitch, no dialogue was audible for the opening ten minutes; initially, I hadn't realised that this was accidental - believing it to be an intentional method of creating an eerie tone. Then, the projectionists remedied the problem and started the film over a again: the clunking dialogue destroyed this potential eeriness and any pathos one might have felt for the lead.

"Splintered" failed to register in any sense: as a horror film, it wasn't frightening or emotionally resonant; one could not empathise with the protagonists; the acting was average-to-poor; the camera work and cinematography (aside from the closing frame - which looked relatively impressive and summed-up the main character's plight) generally added little; the writer's handling of a sensitive social issue was crass and perfunctory...

I can't recommend the film in any sense.