Splinter (2008) Directed by Toby Wilkins
Scifi and horror have danced together for years, going back to the boom of the 50s and 60s monster movies. The two genres overlap so often that it is truly hard to tell them apart. Some of the best horror movies ever made can be considered scifi, such as Alien and The Thing. While those are very well known an famous, Splinter is not. Lets face it, how many of you have actually heard of this movie before today? Probably not many of you. This is where my buddy Craig thrives, he’s good at finding that diamond in the rough, and this was his suggestion for me to watch, except he suggested it two years ago. It took me this long to find the movie online to watch. I probably could’ve bought it on Amazon on dvd or bluray but I’m cheap. I found it on Amazon Prime Instant Video the other night and I turned it on and watched.
This film has a bit in common with the aforementioned The Thing. Splinter is about an organism that feeds on living creatures and uses their bodies as vessels to attack other creatures. The odd fungus/virus/whatever is basically a bunch of needle like protuberances that move along the blood stream, stick out of the skin and force joints to bend backwards. It hunts living creatures by detecting its body heat. The plot of the story is centered around a young couple and two convicts that kidnap them. The group holds up in a gas station once the organism follows them. The rest of the movie takes place in the station while the group struggles to fight off the creature and escape.
I really enjoy the lack of set in this movie, you basically see them in the part store part of the gas station for the bulk of the movie, which is fine because it is only an hour and twenty minutes long. The tension builds any time they try to outsmart the creature or go outside. The body that the creature inhabits is able to move very quickly and attacks ferociously. The acting is pretty decent surprisingly. It does have a low budget feel to it, to that of a Syfy original movie but believe me this is leaps and bounds better. There is a large amount of blood spray and gore to quench the gore hound’s thirst. The film has a very small cast consisting of basically six or seven characters, the three main characters are actually quite rounded and you get to see deeper into why they are whom they are. The special effects are actually very good for the budget size and there really isn’t any “OMG that looks awful” moments. The ending isn’t anything special but it doesn’t feel forced or cliché.
If you find yourself at home this month, looking for a horror movie to watch that you have never seen before, give this a shot. It isn’t original or groundbreaking but you can do much, much worse with the instant streaming services. Splinter is short but sweet and is a breath of fresh air in the bowels of awful low budget horror. I would give this a solid B, I enjoyed it but it isn’t anything amazing. I have to really commend Amazon Prime, they have stepped up their game this month and added a ton of really good and decent horror movies. Netflix truly just sucks in the horror category, they seem to completely ignore that in October, people like watching scary movies. I think they actually remove more than they add.
