Review of Shocker (1989) by Gd A — 03 Jan 2013

This movie has a solid concept, and most of the movie works well, but once the movie reaches the final chapter it turns into an utter disaster. The main character is reasonable but underdeveloped. It seems like he has a decent back-story that was worth going into, in order to make the audience care more about the character and his dad.

Pinker, the villain, is even less developed, he works as a dumb slasher, but more elaboration on him and his motives would have been a good move. The movie takes its time and lays good groundwork with a race to identify and catch a serial killer.

Once caught, he is sentenced to death, but then gains the ability to posses anyone he comes into contact with. How this happens in highly unexplained. There is also an unexplained guardian ghost figure that makes no sense either.

Lack of logic, structure or rules for the supernatural aspects is just poor writing. Things take a bad turn when a chair sprouts eyeballs and grabs the hero. It only gets worse in the resolution, as Pinker chases the hero through different TV shows.

All of a sudden it feels more like a bad early 90s music video on MTV. There was a lot that could have worked here but it is all flushed down the toilet by bad writing and poor execution. This just reaffirms Wes Craven is not a master of anything.