Creature
For the majority of the film’s 93-minute running time, I was quite surprised by how much the low-budget horror film, “Creature,” kept me interested. And here I thought the sight of full female nudity not even a minute into the film was going to be the high point. Fret not– the film gave in to the age-old horror movie tradition of another bit of gratuitous cliche near the end that shot a lot of the film’s good will out the window.
The backstory on the film’s titular “creature” involves incest, a white alligator, and cannibalism, leading to an old legend of a half-man, half-gator who lurks the swamps of Louisiana, searching for a “bride” that will give him the child he lost to the gator over a century ago. Because of the setting and Southern Gothic nature of the story, Adam Green’s “Hatchet” films immediately sprang to mind, but this film surpasses those, in my opinion, because it doesn’t devolve into slasher movie conventions. Oh, it’s plenty cliched, whether you’re talking about the group of twenty-somethings who decide to go investigating the legend, or the three old-timers (led by the legendary horror icon Sid Haig) who have a darker agenda. But co-writer/director Fred M. Andrews doesn’t lean on these cliches but fits them organically, and surprisingly, into the story as a whole. Case in point: Would you believe me if I told you that the black guy actually lives?
If you’re easily offended, I’d stay far away from “Creature”– there’s nothing in the film that is good for you, although male viewers will probably like the scene of girl-on-girl smooching, as well as the times when Andrews manages to get his female characters to take their tops off. All that being said, the most offensive part of “Creature” for me was that Andrews just had to pull the old switcheroo at the end, leading us in one direction but then going, “Oh hey, yeah, you didn’t think I’d leave the ending like THAT, did you? Of course I want to make a sequel!” Sigh. Just sigh. And the film was so satisfying up to that point as well…
