4/4  Splinter
Splinter.
This original, creepy, unnerving horror film gives that fresh sense of nameless dread which has been lost in many modern horror films.
Set in a gas station where a kidnapped couple out on their anniversary are terrorized, along... (read full)

5/5 Never Judge a Forest by the Trees
  by TastyBabySyndrome ("Daddy Dagon's Daycare" - Proud Sponsor of the Little Tendril Baseball Team, USA)
As part of your anniversary, you decide to go camping with your beloved. Your mastery of a tent is shaky, however, and your idea of a motel room in a forgotten town leads to a hostage situation with you and someone that happens to have a gun. Along the way you run over some roadkill, only this roadkill flattens tyour tire, has spikes growing out of it, and is not in the mood to stay dead. So, fleeing, you find a gas station that looks like a good spot to breathe. The only problem with breathing is that it takes time, and time isn't your friend hen contorted things come out of the woodwork and start defying the human anatomy as they twist and turn and start feeding on the things hidden inside your flesh.
O the fun.

What seemed like a bad movie on the Sci-Fi channel quickly turned into one of the more horrific movies I've seen in a while when it comes to great ideas. Not only did the people do well in the story, but the creature effects were good stuff and made me want to cringe. That was because they through out the tennis ball treatment (as the director notes in the extras), opting for someone that could contort and make horrific movements while in a body suit. This gave the thing depth, and the gas station element just seemed like a coffin waiting for its prey. Add to that the fact that everyone had a good backstory, that the dialog wasn't the boring stuff you normally get, and that the movie had some really fearful sequences and you have a great thing shot on a decent budget. I had started to doubt that could be done anymore.

In the extra department, the director explains a little about the monster and I thought that was interesting as well. He says the movements are based on the muscle memory of the creature, noting that if it had taken out a crab then it might scuttle - and so on. He also noted how the station was built, how the people were taught to react, and how the suit worked. This all made me happy, and didn't feel like a waste of my time. Normally I skip extras for just that reason, but this just added to the program and made me enjoy it all the more.

If you want some horror and don't mind it messy, this is for you. It has some terror and some bad death scenes, a reason behind the creature, and a mean ending. It also has good acting in it, making the thing seem real, and some comedic moments. Put that all together and you have a show that has been missing for years. Buy this thing if you want horror - you will not regret the decision.

1/5 All I gotta say is, it's the most cheesiest horror movie out there
  by J. Pindell (Sacramento, CA USA)
I thought this movie was going to be good, after reading the back of it, and, come on, the front cover definitely draws you in. My friends and I were excited to see this, but at the end of the movie, everyone just kept saying how cheesy and dumb it was, and what a waste of our time was. I DEFINITELY don't recommend this movie! Please people! For your own sake, save your money for something more worth it.

2/5 Don't waste your time
  by K. D. Kelly (sf, ca)
Once again, we have a horror film that's big on special effects and lacking in storyline. It's like a piece of fried chicken that's mostly batter. Taste great, less filling. It's not even very scary -- movies generally aren't when the monster is always in your line of sight (and have glaring Achilles' heels to boot). Frankly, the special effects aren't even that good if that's all you care about. Most of the time, the crew could be shaking a monster-sized mass of oily rags under a flickering fluorescent lamp, what with the herky-jerky quick edits that make the fungus-fueled beasts nearly impossible to comprehend. The acting is decent; the characters are generally believable (except for the escaped convict's "heart of gold" tale).

But back to the storyline (WARNING: SPOILER COUNTRY AHEAD!). It starts out so great, too, with two genres coming together in seemingly clever fashion -- crime drama and horror flick -- like peanut butter and chocolate. A guy on the run with his drug-addled girl toy hijacks a vacationing couple's SUV and kidnaps them, apparently so he doesn't have to drive. The action unfolds in an old-growth Oklahoma forest (sounds like paradise!) where there is some ongoing oil extraction taking place that has apparently dug up some ancient spores with the ability to resurrect dead flesh and make it thirst for living flesh. Of course, this isn't the official line; Mr. Almost Ph.D. (the boyfriend without a prison stint) has discovered that this psycho mold just feeds off things that have high temperatures -- leading to a lame joke involving kissing, as well as one host organism that launches itself at an overheated car like it's a long-lost lover and, inexplicably stays there long after the "love affair" has cooled off. Speaking of which, how is it possible this dead body in its car hood embrace would be overlooked when a police officer shows up to bag the prisoner (which is obvious when she notices the blood on the gas station's exterior from the dead junky's bashed brains)? And since when did firecrackers give off less heat than humans? I'm sure I'm leaving out some inconsistencies, but you get the idea.

If the action had been funnier -- like when the cop shows up and you just know she's going to be turned into a pin-cushion contortionist and everybody and their grandmother is telling her to get back into her squad car -- I might still have been able to recommend this film. After all, with a nod to John Carpenter's "The Thing," there ARE some good special effects and the makeup is above par. But the unfolding of events is generally dull, mainly consisting of reanimated flesh running into glass barriers and the characters showing off their lame survival skills. Eventually, the whole mismatched jigsaw fizzles out, with the one-armed frenemy muttering, "F**k," over and over like he forgot his lines, but more likely because he realized the production budget had hit a wall, which would explain what is probably the least explosive gas station fireball in the history of color film.

4/5 Well-acted, inspired creature feature.
  by DanD
SPLINTER is that rare modern horror film: a creature feature supported by an interesting idea and solid acting. It revolves around a simple, novel idea: three people--an escaped convict and the vacationing couple he's taken hostage--stuck inside a gas station, while a parasitic monstrosity tries to get in.

That's not to say SPLINTER is the perfect horror movie; it revolves around the coincidences that plague the horror genre (one of the hostages just happens to be a biology doctoral candidate? Really?), and features one of those pat endings that infuriates me to no end. But the movie revels in its independent status (the special effects are delightfully cheap, the set small, the cast list consisting of, I believe, six people total), and manages to keep its running time short, under 90 minutes--the perfect length for this kind of film. SPLINTER doesn't break any new ground, but it's an interesting, engaging horror film that stands out from its peers on the market today.

4/5 Splinter
  by Clinton Enlow (Kansas)
You always have to go the independent route it seems to find the more interesting horror films. If you were to judge from the opening moments of Splinter you might not make it through the film. The opening as it is involves visually what looks like a man being violated by a badger. Then you get into the main character story of actors that fall straight into their cliches from the nerdy scientist boyfriend played by Paulo Costanzo, his tough wilderness oriented girlfriend, and the hardened criminal who takes them hostage with his drug addled girlfriend. The cons spend too much time dropping the f-bomb and the film doesn't work.
Until everyone gets to the gas station and gets trapped inside the tight little set of a rural gas station with a creature outside fighting them to get in. The director Toby Wilkins in my opinion has made an amazingly tense little creature feature with an interesting monster in the form of parasitic splinters that take over the bodies of creatures they inhabit. The film as it is is intense survival horror with characters fighting to survive compounded by things like bodies that might not be dead and a lack of help. I liked the idea of a single set which is used to great effect by Wilkins and all the actors do good at never becoming annoying, especially Shea Whigam, a character actor who makes a good hero in the escaped convict. If theres one complaint against the movie it would be in the use of shaky combat cam. I can understand why its used here and thankfully its done better than in the recent Pandorum hiding problems with visual effects but the jerky editing and images still aren't a favorite film aspect of mine as I like to sometimes see what I'm supposed to be afraid of.
Still the movies a lot of fun for those who enter with the right expectations. Theres some gore, some violence but a lot of suspense that should have it. For the DVD Magnolia again steps forward and delivers a good disc with featurettes on aspects of the film, a making of that is disappointingly short and an engaging commentary from the director and cast.
I liked the film quiet a bit and recommend it for those seeking out something differnt than the normal studio horror film.