It's hard to explain why a movie so "bad" by ordinary measures remains a mesmerizing experience, and it's even harder to do it without spoilers. The uneven, wandering, genre-crossing plot is indeed bizarre, but often exquisitely so. The characters are all likable if seriously flawed. The odd story, the many interesting photographic vignettes, and some unique sequences that should not be divulged here, make this a worthwhile rental in spite of itself.
We've all seen similar menacing-monster effects before, but these have a peculiar rawness that sets them apart. (You can't really appreciate the complexity of a beast that seems to be mostly teeth-and-evil until you see it rendered.) Parts of the film are terrifying, and while there is a LOT of carnage, virtually all of it is filmed skillfully so that the Gasp Index is high, but flat-out gratuitous on-screen gore is minimal. I like that. Finally, after a short while one is always aware of a second layer of reality & telepathy that is executed well.
The user-ratings graph for this film is all over the place, so obviously not everyone reacts the same way. (I haven't seen such an inconclusive distribution since Blair Witch...)
I recommend seeing it on DVD for the alternate ending, which I preferred. It's much sadder, but less cheesy in that it forgoes the saved-at-the-last-second triteness of the final worm-squishing.
For some reason films set in New England are often loaded with geographical inaccuracies. Nobody in Maine would speak of driving south as going "toward Massachusetts" (which does not border Maine at all.) In the first scene that mentions the Quabbin Reservoir, it's said to be "not far" from the travelers' current position, which is presumably in southern Maine, and the dialog implies one could make the drive from one to the other in about 15 minutes. In reality it's over 100 miles. And much mention is made of a town called Derry, Maine, which does not exist but which is in fact the name of one of a well-known cluster of towns in southern New Hampshire, in an area very close to the part of Maine where this story takes place. Why this oddity was necessary I'll never know. If this seems like a small complaint, imagine how distracted you might be by a story set in a fictional Nevada town called Los Angeles, whose name was repeated several times per hour.
7/10
We've all seen similar menacing-monster effects before, but these have a peculiar rawness that sets them apart. (You can't really appreciate the complexity of a beast that seems to be mostly teeth-and-evil until you see it rendered.) Parts of the film are terrifying, and while there is a LOT of carnage, virtually all of it is filmed skillfully so that the Gasp Index is high, but flat-out gratuitous on-screen gore is minimal. I like that. Finally, after a short while one is always aware of a second layer of reality & telepathy that is executed well.
The user-ratings graph for this film is all over the place, so obviously not everyone reacts the same way. (I haven't seen such an inconclusive distribution since Blair Witch...)
I recommend seeing it on DVD for the alternate ending, which I preferred. It's much sadder, but less cheesy in that it forgoes the saved-at-the-last-second triteness of the final worm-squishing.
For some reason films set in New England are often loaded with geographical inaccuracies. Nobody in Maine would speak of driving south as going "toward Massachusetts" (which does not border Maine at all.) In the first scene that mentions the Quabbin Reservoir, it's said to be "not far" from the travelers' current position, which is presumably in southern Maine, and the dialog implies one could make the drive from one to the other in about 15 minutes. In reality it's over 100 miles. And much mention is made of a town called Derry, Maine, which does not exist but which is in fact the name of one of a well-known cluster of towns in southern New Hampshire, in an area very close to the part of Maine where this story takes place. Why this oddity was necessary I'll never know. If this seems like a small complaint, imagine how distracted you might be by a story set in a fictional Nevada town called Los Angeles, whose name was repeated several times per hour.
7/10