Review of Skinwalkers (2002) by Darren D — 05 Feb 2008

This film was actually not as bad as I was expecting. It doesn't seem to have gone down too well with other users here, but I found Skinwalkers to be pretty decent.

By reaching his 13th birthday, a young boy will have the power to end the werewolf curse. A literal town full of peace-loving werewolves lead by Elias Koteas, lock themselves up each night to keep from killing. They have protected the boy and his mother, Rhona Mitra, since he was born - counting the days until the prophecy can be fulfilled.

Then comes Jason Behr and his evil cronies, a pack of killer werewolves who do not wish their curse to end. To ensure this they must kill the boy and time is running out.

I was expecting a cheap, poorly made, straight-to-video waste of my time - with a bad script and, Koteas aside, worse acting.

Yes the dialogue is pretty slack and the characters are wafer thin, but despite the nonsense of 'the prophecy' I found the story to be quite entertaining.

The story of this film has a very 80's feel to it, so it's not surprising to see a few scenes and themes lifted from some of it's predecessors. There is a bar scene straight out of Near Dark and with mother and child on the run there are shades of The Terminator in there too. Obviously Skinwalkers in not in the same league as these films, but as a fairly low budget movie it is pretty good.

There is also a great scene where the whole werewolf town grab their guns to defend the boy and mother - who have no idea they have been surrounded by werewolves all these years. This scene reminded me of The Truman Show to some degree.

Stan Winston provides some pretty impressive creatures effects, although there was not as much werewolf-on-werewolf action as I was hoping for.

All in all if you are at a loose end for something to watch, you could do worse than this.