Lockjaw: Rise of the Kulev Serpent

Another CGI monstrosity taking the form of a dodgy monster movie. These films tend to be interchangeable from one another and that's the case in point here, it's the kind of film you'll forget you watched just hours after viewing because it brings absolutely nothing new to the table.

Instead, the viewer is saddled with rotten characters, an awful script and of course the requisite CGI gore effects which have to be seen to be believed. The story involves some half-baked voodoo theme in which a grieving husband decides to get revenge on some pesky teenagers by summoning a 'Kulev serpent' to get revenge. Said serpent has the body of a giant snake and the head of an alligator and looks like something out of an old Playstation game circa 1998.

If that wasn't bad enough, the characters in the film are even more annoying than usual, with characterisation reduced down to the level of a comic book. One supposedly intelligent character has glasses, that's how carefully the characters have been created. Inevitably the cast is full of unknowns - I should think so, given the horrible acting on offer - aside from the down-on-his-luck DMX, playing some kind of big game hunter living out in the wilderness. Another movie to stay away from.

I'd give Lockjaw 1 star purely because IMDb will not allow me to rate it any lower. 1 star is being extremely generous. The whole film is terrible with wooden acting throughout, at times it's too painful for words. In addition you have to endure the lack of continuity that runs from beginning to end. As if the horrendous special effects don't make it unbelievable enough.

I would seriously not recommend this film if time is remotely precious to you. It's an hour you'll never get back and will leave you questioning why on earth it ever made it to DVD. It cost £7 here in the UK which is absolutely shocking. I like cheesy horror films that manage to be awful but good at the same time. This can't even claim to be that, it is just genuinely one of the most ridiculously dire films I have ever seen.

As a child, Alan Cade steals a wooden voodoo box containing a magical pen that has the power to make whatever is drawn with it become a reality; years later, when a monster truck accidentally runs down his wife Becky, Alan uses the pen to summon a monster to seek revenge on the occupants of the vehicle, five friends partying at a nearby cabin.

Lockjaw: Rise of the Kulev Serpent (AKA Carnivorous) is a derivative straight-to-DVD piece of garbage that rips off its basic revenge plot from enjoyable straight-to-video 80s horror Pumpkinhead. But where Pumpkinhead proved to be a fun creature-feature thanks to solid direction from FX legend Stan Winston, a very cool monster (also by Winston), and a decent performance from seasoned pro Lance Henrickson, Carnivorous simply elicits boredom and unintentional laughter in equal measures with its uninspired script, inexperienced cast, and truly crappy beast—an over-sized, poorly rendered CGI snake with an alligator's head.

Opening with an embarrassingly naff credits sequence, complete with cheesy lightning effects and statues with glowing red eyes, Carnivorous does not bode well from the outset, and matters only get worse from thereon in: director Amir Valinia sets up the film's back-story in an awful prologue that displays a complete lack of talent from its child actors (while also showcasing a neat array of dollar store Halloween props), before cutting to the present day, where he introduces viewers to his equally untalented adult cast, a bunch of total unknowns who are likely to remain that way if this is the kind of bilge they choose to appear in.

After some predictably dumb drunken shenanigans at the cabin, during which sexist jerk Kurt (Caleb Michaelson) gets a lap-dance from drunken big-breasted slapper Ashley (Victoria Vodar), Kurt's nice-girl girlfriend Sam (Lauren Fain) seeks comfort in the arms of good-guy Kelly (Wes Brown), and Ashley has sex with her boyfriend (but annoyingly keeps her bra on the whole time), the creature finally moves in for the kill. Several unimpressive death scenes later, ex-rapper DMX turns up with a rocket launcher and blows the 'snakigator' to kingdom come, finally putting an end to our suffering.

What a god awful waste of time and television broadcasting bandwidth. This movie is an IQ test . . . if you watch, you fail. I thought nothing could be worse than Bone Eater... I was wrong. Nothing could possibly be worse than Mutants... I stand corrected. There were so many things wrong with this movie, not the least of which was the acting, there's just everywhere to start, and nowhere to finish. I've seen more realistic responses from a corpse than those generated by the rejects performing in this piece of trash. Why would anyone in the movie-making business let their name be associated with this thing? Anyway, do yourself a favor, sidle up to a piece of metal and watch rust develop... you'll be far happier.

A group of bratty, narcissistic kids venture into the deep swamps of West Bumblef&%k to go camping. These morons wind up running over the wife of a guy (whom we saw in the prologue mess around with a voodoo stick and unleashes a demon snake with an alligator head that killed his father) So after the jerks do their little hit and run, the guy,in a fit of rage, draws the snake/alligator thing eating the SUV they're in. So naturally the demonic thing attempts to kill them one by one. Thus making the film longer then it needs to be. Oh yeah and DMX is in it very sporadically. Despite top-billings it's merely slightly more then a glorified cameo.

Part killer snake flick, part "Pukinhead", ALL bad. I haven't been this bored or this mad at a so-called 'movie' in quite some time. This one has absolutely no redeeming values, bad wooden acting, atrocious special effect, the lamest dialog you're liable to hear in quite some time and an incredibly anti-climatic ending. It left a really horrid taste in my mouth. I've seen so many killer animal films and can safely say this was one of the worst.

My Grade: F

DVD Extras: A meager stills gallery (almost half of it devoted to DMX and his bazooka); trailer for this film; and trailers for Dark Reel, Baseline Killer, & Ghost Month