Main cast: Shea Whigham (Dennis Farell), Paulo Costanzo (Seth Belzer), Jill Wagner (Polly Watt), Rachel Kerbs (Lacey Belisle), Laurel Whitsett (Sheriff Terri Frankell), and Charles Baker (Blake Sherman Jr)
Director: Toby Wilkins
Body horror is on the menu, people, as Splinter opens with a curious gas station attendant getting… attacked by a bloody porcupine? It’s hard to tell as the movie resorts to annoying quick edits to make sure that I get a headache instead of actually seeing properly what is happening on the screen.
Anyway, proving that nothing good happens when city yuppies travel into rural areas, lovers Polly Watt and Seth Belzer are headed for some camping trip when their car is hijacked by escaped convict Dennis Farell and his girlfriend Lacey.
Well, their awkward conversations are halted by the car runs over what seems like a mutated porcupine and oops, they have a flat tire problem.
They head over to a nearby gas station, which just happens to be one the poor gas station attendant in the opening is working at. He’s now infected by what seems to be splinter-like parasites, which turns him into a zombie-like creature that attacks our four main characters.
Make no mistake, this one seems, er, loosely inspired by past body horror classics such as the remakes of The Blob and The Thing, only set in the wilderness. Most noticeably, the parasites transform their host into very dexterous and flexible creatures that have the ability to add its victims’ body parts to its bulk, but oh, it senses its victims by body temperature and hence hiding in the freezer is convenient way to hide from these things.
Now, I like my gore straight. I want to see what is happening because I am a gore hound that way.
While this one certainly has ample opportunities to rain down gore on the audience, sadly, it opts to do that annoying quick shaky-shaky epileptic seizure realness edit nonsense that makes it nearly impossible to make out what is happening when someone is getting killed.
The film has no issues keeping the camera steady and focused when the boring main characters are arguing and fighting, so this is definitely an annoyance that is done by design!
This is a shame because the parts that I can make out clearly are the dullest ones.
Dennis is supposed to be this anti-hero type, but for the most part, he’s just a loud, posturing blowhard with a stereotypical back story, and his “noble sacrifice” can be seen coming from a mile away. After all, this movie doesn’t have the guts to let the bad guys walk away into the sunset—it doesn’t even have the guts to show me the guts, after all.
The only aspect of this thing that doesn’t follow present day horror film tropes is the uselessness of the female characters. The guys have to do all the heavy lifting here, which is something I don’t see much these days anymore, heh.
At any rate, Splinter doesn’t have the testicular fortitude to be really scary or even a little unpredictable. It feels more like a slasher film that is clumsily converted into a body horror thing at a late stage. Perhaps this is why I can’t recall much of it once I’m done with it.
This is a shame because the monster concept is cool. It deserves to be in a far better movie that this thing.
