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A Bengal tiger
has managed to escape and is now roaming
around in the woods outside a small town. It doesn't
take long before it runs out of things to hunt and
starts to munch away on the locals as well. Panic
spreads in the small community while the sheriff tries
desperately to get the tiger killed. But how do you
hunt the predator, when you're the prey?
Scheduled to premiere on the Sci-Fi channel later this
year, I managed to track down a DVD from Thailand of
this new creature feature starring Gary Busey. And
not too surprisingly, it turned out to be yet another
by-the-numbers nature takes revenge movie. Though
this one actually has a couple of things going for
it. Maneater looks technically very good and it seems
as if the budget was fairly high. The tiger itself is
not CGI-made (as far as I could tell) but is actually
a real tiger - which is very much preferred over poor
CGI effects. And perhaps most surprisingly, the cops
in this movie are actually likeable and want to keep
their community safe. For these things I applaud them.
The story is simple. A huge tiger roams around in the
woods killing people at random. A young boy who's
home schooled by his mother (meaning that she forces
him to read the bible every day) feels a strange
connection with the tiger and when the national guard
comes to kill the tiger, the boy feels like he has
to put a stop to it. Meanwhile the sheriff keeps busy
with trying to keep people out of the woods, which is
easier said than done when Entertainment Weekly puts
out a $10,000 reward for the tiger's head, causing
hunters from all over America to come and try to kill
the beautiful beast. There really are quite a few
things going on in here, but none of the strings that
bind the movie together are very interesting.
Most of the tiger attacks are off screen and we're
left looking at severed body parts (which really isn't
all that exciting). I also couldn't help but to compare
this with the killer lion film "Prey" for some reason,
perhaps due to the fact that both movies felt more
like Action movies rather than actual creature features.
For some reason giant cats just aren't that intimidating
I guess - at least not when you see them on TV.
However, I have to point out that the one on-screen
kill that we do get is very professionally made and
looks terrifyingly realistic.
Ultimately, Man-Eater is your typical Sci-Fi original.
I was hoping that this new bulk of creature features
that they have coming up later this year would be
somewhat different, but from the looks of it so far,
they're not. It feels like we've seen Man-Eater tons
of times before and it's just not very exciting.
If you want to see a killer tiger sneak around in
some bushes, go ahead, but don't expect a horror flick
because this really is more of an action movie.
We get severed body parts, one half of a body, an
eaten up face, some slashing and ripping and some
more. More than expected.
Standard stuff, I might as well not review the scores
anymore for horror flicks as it all sounds the same
these days. Nothing special here.
Uneven killer tiger movie which fails to capture the
essence of what creature features are all about. The
tiger doesn't feel very intimidating, only one of the
kills are on-screen, and the stories are all quite
dull if you ask me. Nothing special here folks.
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