The Bone Snatcher (2003)

Three miners prospecting for diamonds in the Namib Desert discover a hollow area that looks promising.  Upon breaking it open, Harvey (Jan Ellis) is attacked by a strange creature.

Meanwhile, Zack (Scott Bairstow), a Canadian designer of survival equipment is sent to the mining camp as a systems analyst.  Shortly after arriving he joins in a trip to the desert in a fuel truck to look for the miners with hot-headed searcher Karl (Warrick Gier) and local customs agent Mikki (Rachel Shelley).  After finding the bodies, Karl initially believes Harvey murdered the others to steal diamonds.  However, Titus (Patrick Shai), who still holds to his traditional beliefs, quickly believes the creature to be IsiKhulu, a legendary immortal creature that lives under the earth.

While searching for Harvey, they find his bones left behind, and shortly after come face-to-face with the creature itself - which appears to be using Harvey's bones to move.  The truck soon breaks down, stranding the group in the desert, and they are targeted by the creature.  Well, creatures, actually, as they turn out to be a mutant form of ant that bonds together over human and animal bones to give themselves a means of moving faster and manipulating their environment.

Zack, Karl and Mikki soon find out that the original opening that was made was the nest, and now the ants are looking for a new colony, which it is up to them to make sure the ants are contained.

I am surprised to find so much hate for this film, as it is quite good.  It's obviously on a budget, so director Jason Wulfsohn plays it smart by having most of the CGI happen in the dark (where its dodginess isn't as apparent), as well as having a number of scenes being a man skulking around in the dark in a monster suit (Brian Claxton Payne).  What glimpses we do see of the creature when it is mobile are almost Lovecraftian.

I think the area where it does fall short is that Zack is not much of a lead character.  I found myself caring about supporting characters like Titus and Karl much more.  And, for a shoehorned love interest, there is very little chemistry going on.

In all, a fun (if highly clichéd) monster movie romp, with some beautiful cinematography of Namibia thrown in for good measure.

The Bone Snatcher (2003)
98 minutes
Starring: Scott Bairstow, Rachel Shelley, Warrick Gier
Director: Jason Wulfsohn



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Lawnmower Man (1992)

Image
Virtual reality has been one of the most hyped, and one of the most disappointing, promises of technology.  While it promotes immersion into a cybernetic world what it really provides are video games with 20-year-old graphics and the occasional bruise when one accidentally hits a closet door.  In the case of The Lawnmower Man  what it is promising is that something with graphics just a little bit better than Dire Straits's "Money for Nothing" video will somehow change the world and alter humanity. It was laughable then and it is laughable now.  The only person not laughing was Stephen King, who demanded that his name be removed from all future advertising for the movie because he never wrote this.  The story, of which a short film was made in the 1980s, involves a man unwittingly hiring a Greek god to mow his lawn and, after said god creates a spectacle, paying for the landscaping with his life.  It's only a few pages and, in my opinion, it is one of King's worst
Read more

Things (1989)

Image
Most of the time when I hear a movie is the worst ever I know that is hyperbole. There are few candidates and I would even say the famous book chronicling the worst movies ever made got it wrong.  Plan 9 from Outer Space is laughably incompetent, but enjoyable.  The worst kind of films are the ones where no joy can be found in the watching experience, for reasons ranging from unlikeable characters to just sheer boredom.  A truly horrible movie is something like  Things.   This is a 1989 direct-to-video horror film from Canada, filmed on 8mm and dubbed once it was completed and the makers realized most of the sound was unusable.  Director Andrew Jordan and writer Barry J. Gillis managed to grab porn star Amber Lynn for an hour to shoot her as a news reporter just so they could put her face on the video box.  Most of the music was done by Gillis, and some of it by a local band called Familiar Strangers.  It was filmed in large part in Andrew Norman's basement, and most of the props w
Read more

The Omen (1976)

Image
A movie does not have to be high art to strike a chord with the public.  The Omen was an attempt by writer David Seltzer to make some money and get a nice trip to the UK.  It just so happened that because of The Exorcist the public was hungry for more movies involving demons and such, and adding a veneer of Catholicism didn't hurt either.  The Vatican's secrets are most likely of more interest to scholars than anyone else, but a religion doesn't hang on over the centuries without creating a bit of mystery.  In this case, Seltzer settled on the Revelation of St. John, the low-fantasy portion of the Bible and, instead of an hilariously named (albeit historically correct) demon named Pazuzu, with The Omen we get the son of Satan himself.  When Robert Thorne (Gregory Peck) is informed that his child has died he visits a priest at the hospital in Rome where his wife is coalescing.  He is given an offer too good to be true: a foundling, whose mother died in childbirth, was born
Read more