Unseen Terror: Day 29

After botching a heroin smuggling operation, a group of people lost at sea discover an abandoned oil rig and decide to take refuge. Soon, they discover exactly why the rig houses no life: it's been ravaged and cleansed by an unknown organism nicknamed "Charlie," a failed experiment which can shape-shift into it's prey and absorb their memories.

I can recall seeing bits of Proteus (also known as Below in some circles) on television when I was younger, as well as spotting the VHS in assorted video stores. I had fond memories of it, mostly due to how bizarre it looked and how the couple of scenes I did see were kind of neat. After seeing the full film though, I kind of wish I had retained those memories the way they were. The finished product is just another mediocre ripoff of The Thing, and one that suffers from a weak script more than anything else.

The film seems to like relying on jump scares more than anything, which can be grating considering that it should be spending it's time more on making these characters anything but vanilla. Even Doug Bradley (the only recognizable name here) is wasted, especially considering he's buried underneath a load of makeup and has maybe 1-2 scenes in the whole film. The script is mostly boring until the last 30 minutes when it just goes into absurd territory, with two plot twists that had me rolling my eyes. There's also one ASTONISHINGLY terribly edited scene involving a character being in two places at the same time, though you might have to look carefully for it (hint: it involved the character Christine).

I will say that there were a couple of bright spots in the film though. The effects work on the creature was surprisingly decent considering that this was released straight-to-video, though the end monster (much like the previously reviewed Leviathan) looks pretty silly. The acting wasn't too terrible at times, despite that the characters are very forgettable like I said before. But even those aren't really enough to warrant a real recommendation considering how "blah" it is. This one isn't available on DVD as far as I know, but you can view it on Netflix and Youtube, albeit in parts.

Tomorrow, I check out another flick not on DVD, but there may be a legitimate reason as to why THE DEVILS actually isn't.