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Man-Thing |
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Recently the
locals in a small village have been turning up
dead in the swamp. A new sheriff is called in to investigate
things but with absolutely no clue of what's going on and
with new dead bodies showing up each day he quickly realizes
that his job is not going to be easy. What is it really that
lives out there in the swamp? Is it a vicious serial killer
or is it something much, much worse?
I thought that Man-Thing was going to be a theatrical flick,
that's why I was so surprised when a DVD screener of this
showed up in the mailbox. Surprised yet intrigued I put it
into my DVD player, the DVD looked nice and everything
about it felt theatrical, which turned my interest into
suspicion. I mean, why wouldn't a high budget flick based
on a famous comic go theatrical? Well I was just about to
find out. Man-Thing actually feels like you're watching a
comic as not much makes sense, like why would the sheriff
kiss a girl which he really doesn't seem to like at all?
That scene was just out of the blue, much like every other
scene in the movie. When the movie was finally over it was
obvious to me why it didn't go theatrical, it's just not
good enough, nor deep enough. However, as a DTV horror
flick, this is pretty entertaining. I mean, when you're in
the theatre you want a good story and nice character
development but when you watch a flick at home in your
comfortable couch, you don't really reflect too much on
the flaws of a movie like this.
Man-Thing is really just a movie with a lot of action,
a fun nonsense story and some cool gore. As I mentioned
before, the character development is not good at all.
When the movie's over you still don't know any of the
characters very well, they're all very shallow. The
acting is nothing special either but with the characters
these actors had to work with, you really can't expect
the acting to be very good so I think they still did a
pretty solid job. The directing and photography is
excellent and the colours are beautiful to look at. The
swamp looks realistic even if it really doesn't, how
strange that may sound. The special effects are also
very good as expected, I mean it is a high budget flick
after all so what else can you expect and the movie all
in all didn't disappoint me really. IMDB lists this as
an action/sci-fi/thriller movie so when it turned out to
be a horror flick, because that's the only genre that
this really is, I was honestly just happy.
It feels strange that this was produced by the same team
that produced big movies like Spider-Man but I'm still
happy that nonsense movies like this get made every once
in a while as it's nice to relax your brain with a fun
horror flick with absolutely no credibility at all since
every horror movie these days seem to focus too much on
twists and clever sub stories. Most twists have been used,
the sub stories feel less and less clever and for once it
was just nice to be able to kick back and enjoy a stupid,
silly horror flick without any twists and sub stories at
all. Maybe, the script writers were just lazy, or maybe
they just wanted to entertain the fan audience of the
comic books as this really is true to the comics, something
which most videogame and comic book adaptions are not. So
if you're a fan of big swamp monsters or the comic books
about Man-Thing, check this one out.
We get a couple of cool impalements, lots of blood splatter,
a bunch of gory corpses and a whole lot more. Good stuff.
The soundtrack also has that true comic book feeling to it.
Some western sounds along with some rock and pop music
blended nicely together with a solid atmospheric score.
Lions Gate made a smart move when they decided to send this
direct to the video shelf as I think that this would have
been a huge disaster at the box-office. As a DTV flick
however, it's actually pretty cool. It's stupid, it's
entertaining, and most importantly, it's true to the original
comic books. Check it out if you like big swamp monsters and
cool CG-effects but it's nothing special.
Review By: AnthroFred
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