While camping out in the forests of Oklahoma, young couple Seth and Polly find themselves the victims of a kidnapping and carjacking. The kidnappers, convict Dennis and his addict girlfriend Lacey, instruct them to drive the roads, until they hit a small, splinter-covered animal and receive a flat tire. After changing tires, the couples stop at a nearby gas station, but find the attendant ravaged and infected from an unknown symptom similar to the animal seen in the road, and soon find the station being overrun by a strain of a new, parasitic being that could infect and kill them all.
In my days of working at Hollywood Video, I acquired many "blind buys" for a rather insignificant amount of money. While a large portion of these pictures have turned out for the better, there are still a handful that have sat on my DVD shelf collecting dust for no reason other than I keep forgetting to watch them. Splinter was one of those such titles, and has even been passed over for the previous two years of Unseen Terror. Five years seems like a better time than never to finally brush that dust away though.
While I was aware that Splinter didn't boast a very large cast to begin with, I wasn't wise to the fact that it had a couple of familiar faces in it. Charles Baker (Breaking Bad) has a very brief role in the beginning, and Jill Wagner, who I'm still convinced needs more work despite Blade: The TV Series being canceled after one season, is in the lead female role. I honestly didn't recognize Paulo Costanzo of Road Trip fame, who seemed to age about fifteen years in only eight, and who was probably the weakest link in the film despite being the lead actor. Shea Whigham (Boardwalk Empire) plays a much more entertaining, and all around interesting character with at least some sort of backstory, as played out as it might end up being. As far as his character's significant other goes, I can't say that I've ever heard much about Rachel Kerbs, but I'm in no particular hurry to watch her play a junkie again anytime soon.
The film isn't shy about wearing its influences on its sleeve either. If you're wondering if that synopsis described above sounds vaguely familiar, I can assure you that it mercifully doesn't play out like a carbon copy of said picture...not that there's anything wrong with that. There are also subtle nods to pictures like Evil Dead 2 later in the film's second half, mostly in the effects department, which to my knowledge was done with nearly all practical work. Speaking of the practical work, it looks fine for what we see of it, but the camerawork here is so incredibly inconsistent, that you can never focus on any of the beauty of the creator's visions, made all the more shameful when you view the special features on the DVD (for which there are a lot) and see an actual gallery of the mutations and monsters included in the picture. Splinter's beasts look fairly twisted, like a combination of something from John Carpenter's The Thing and something vomited up from Silent Hill, but when you give us approximately two or three milliseconds to even glance at them before jumping back and forth, it borders on the irritating, and descends into the territory of disappointing.
In the end, I think Splinter wants to believe it is better than it actually is, but that doesn't make it a terrible film or anything akin to it. Trust me, I've seen some truly terrible films this year, and when I say I'd watch this over either of yesterday's entries, I sincerely mean that with all of my heart and soul. There are some solid practical effects, an interesting story, some pretty decent gore (a mighty fine scene involving amputation, a knife, and a cinder block should please even the most hardcore of purists), and the whole thing clocks in at around eighty minutes. Not a terrible way to spend five dollars, is it? Or was it three? Whatever the case, I'm sure Magnolia Pictures wouldn't charge you a great deal for this nowadays.
Tomorrow, we're still stuck on sliver removal with STAKE LAND!
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