Last week I did a review of Brett Simmon's new direction Animal. I mentioned that he had previously done a film with this production company, which according to critics wasn't the best film either. Well I gave the film a go at proving them wrong. It was made by Chiller Films and was released not long ago. It's genre? The one that seems to go hand in hand with the director. Horror. Monkey's Paw had a lot of the same going for it as Animal, but I'd be hard pressed to call any of it positive. While it's true that the story isn't about a wild beast, but an ancient horror legend, we end up with a zombie story, with a dash of voodoo, and a pinch of modern day America. The problem with stories like this is that they are cliché and not really all that interesting. The story: The film centers on Jake Tilton, who acquires a mystical "monkey's paw" talisman that grants its possessor three wishes. Jake finds his world turned upside down after his first two wishes result in co-worker Tony Cobb being resurrected from the dead. As Cobb pressures Jake into using the final wish to reunite Cobb with his son, his intimidation quickly escalates into relentless murder-- forcing Jake to outwit his psychotic friend and save his remaining loved ones. First off granting wishes, voodoo story is a little overused, there have been oodles of films about this topic and if that's all they were about they didn't really stand out of the crowd. The whole story and atmosphere would work great in say a Tales from the Crypt episode, but not in a feature film. Plus the film has a bunch of things wrong with it too. First off it's so TV movie. It's not really that it's just reminds me of one and the script helped in that department. Not to mention that it's so riddled with logical holes it's Swiss cheese. Sometimes they were made out of stupidity, sometimes it just seemed they weren't really paying attention. The next problem is something I spoke about in relation to Animal too – though it was a lot more annoying in that film – is the fact that there is no blood. Yeah you can make a case for that not being too important and it really isn't if the film has something else going for it, if it has squat? Then at least it could be bloody no? Unfortunately it's sorely lacking here. The one positive thing are the actors, who did a solid job, other than that I don't really have anything good to say about it. It seems like this production company is predominantly going for broke in horror stories that can be easily shown on TV. But then I kind of don't get how come they don't just make films for the SCI-FI Channel. All in all the director Brett Simmons was true to himself. Animal was a kind of pointless, but watchable once, mediocre horror and so was Monkey's Paw. I think the whole thing took a left turn at Albuquerque when they picked out the basic story. Sure that makes it hard to go anywhere good, so then why the hell make the film? 2/10 https://www.youtube.com/user/Videodromeblog
Review of The Monkey's Paw
