Friday Night Frights: Creature of Darkness DVD Review

As a child, Andrew (Devon Sawa) was warned by his uncle of an alien plot to kidnap humans for testing. Although farfetched, the story affected Andrew subconsciously to the point that his adult nights are plagued with night terrors of these aliens and the experiments they would perform. Worried about their friend, Andrew’s buddies, plus the sterotype jerk character (who just sort of shows up, uninvited) take Andrew for a weekend of camping and offroading to take his mind off of things. The idea backfires as the group run afoul of an alien who uses their chosen campsite as his hunting grounds.

Creature of Darkness is one of those movies you can pop in to the dvd player after everyone goes to bed and kick back to without having to put on the thinking cap. The characters are all your standard sci-fi/horror flavors and the monster basically walks around grabbing people or creating sinkholes to literally let the ground swallow them up. The final fight scene gets a nod for originality and the only thing I didn’t find myself overlooking about the story was, since there was a secret army base nearby, how come they never notice anything and come to investigate? Probably because that would be a pretty lame movie Bulin!

The practical mask for the alien is really good, actually a bit better than the cgi they use for the full body shots of him running around and opening portals in the sides of mountains. Balance the two and I would give it an average grade on special effects, perhaps on the high side of a c, thanks to a few nice explosions toward the ending.

The strength of the movie is in the cast, which has a lot of familiar names. First off is Devon Sawa, who you may recognize (or not) from Final Destination. As Andrew Sawa really puts his all into the movie and never gives the impression he is there to draw a check. Next up is Matthew Lawrence, who has grown a bit since Gimme A Break and Tales from the Darkside: The Movie, has a brief role as well as Andrew’s friend who is more interested in pursuing his new love interest than in helping his friend overcome his fears. Probably most recognizable is Blue Crush’s Sanoe Lake, who does a strong performance as Andrew’s love interest and damsel in distress, Gina. Overall the acting is good, with a few overly cheesy roles thrown in to keep things interesting.

While it won’t win any awards for most original script, I had a fun hour and forty minutes watching Creature of Darkness. I liked the practical mask for the alien and the acting was above average for a low budget feature. I don’t think there is much rewatchability to it so I am going to recommend a rental but if you like low budget Sci-fi movies, this is a fun one to watch over a few beers with your friends.

On a totally seperate note, I have to say that the cover artwork is just a little too simular to the last incarnation of War of the Worlds, well I’ll let you be the judge:

Creature of Darkness is available now, courtesy of MTI Home Video.