Every day Robert Saucedo shines a spotlight on a movie either so bad it’s good or just downright terrible. Today: The return of Devon Sawa!
Creature of Darkness, the recently released straight-to-DVD alien invader creature feature from writer/director Mark Stouffer, taught me a lot in its short 90-minute running time.
I learned, for example, that former teen heartthrob Devon Sawa is, in fact, not dead — he has merely let himself go a bit and resigned himself to a future of cheesy horror movies in which he can gleefully coast from one terrible CGI monster to another until the day he finally finds himself in the clutches of that one fate not even the man who tricked Death-personified-as-Tony-Todd can escape: VH1 reality shows.
I also learned that aliens like watching pretty girls take showers just as much as humans do. It’s nice to see that even across the span of galaxies, we’re not so different.
It’s only fitting that Creature of Darkness would be so chockfull of useful information; it’s written and directed by Mark Stouffer, one of three brothers who spent their youth documenting animals in their natural habitat — as fictionalized in the 1997 film Wild America (and thus, explaining that a favor was what it took for Devon Sawa to climb out of whatever Big Mac-filled hole he had been dwelling in for the past few years).
In Creature of Darkness, a group of slightly multi-ethnic young adults have their weekend of camping and extreme motorbike madness interrupted by the presence of a tentacle-sporting alien who systematically traps and kidnaps the humans one-by-one.
Using all of the weapons in his disposal — including, but not limited to, snot, the spinal cords of his victims and his gooey tentacles — the alien lays waste to the assembled collection of slightly pretty, mostly stupid humans.
Creature of Darkness is like Predator but instead of army commandos, you’ve got the douchebags from MTV’s Jersey Shore.
Much like the Predator who hunted Arnold, the Creature of Darkness is also a master of disguise. His idea of camouflage, though, is to hide under a raincoat.
That’s right. Let that sink in for a bit. The film’s Creature of Darkness, presumably for budgetary reasons, spends the majority of the film with its bulbous alien head sticking out of a poncho; it’s tentacles waving from the jacket’s armholes.
And thus, the movie failed.
Even if it weren’t for the film’s lame-ass alien, the terrible script would have been the death of Creature of Darkness.
Instead of roasting so’ mores, the heroes of Creature of Darkness spend their campfires rambling off enough awkward exposition to choke a James Bond villain — with Devon Sawa’s character, in a stroke of near idiotic genius, linking the cheesy flashback dream sequences the audience has been hit over the head with for the last half hour with the alien’s master plot as if he was working fervently at solving a Connect the Dot picture.
The humans in Creature of Darkness have a well-rounded education. All of them know a little about a lot of subjects — except how not to get eaten. The final plot on how to get rid of the alien is like a recipe for lemonade that consists of 15 percent cat piss and 85 percent artificial sweetener — it’s hilariously ludicrous with that hint of acidic taste but is sorta sweet going down.
When the possible racism of having a black character throw a spear is negated by the fact that said actor is terrible at it, you know you have something special on your hands.
Creature of Darkness is quite possibly the worst movie I have seen in a long, long time. I’m talking Troll 2 bad. Manos: The Hands of Fate terrible.
Let’s just say, I hope Creature of Darkness was a joke and that it was meant to be intentionally bad. Otherwise, wow. Just wow.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNpAA24atqQ
Robert Saucedo forgot to mention Matthew Lawrence was also in the movie — much like he forgot Matthew Lawrence even existed. Follow Robert on Twitter @robsaucedo2500.
