Frankenfish Review

[Mr.HoRrOr]

Plot-A giant mutated Snakehead fish is on the loose in a Louisiana swamp. Can a few armed residents stop it before it eats everyone including them?


Cast-
Tory Kittles
Tomas Arana
Mark Boone Junior
Richard Edson
Donna Biscoe
K.D. Aubert
China Chow


My thoughts-When I hear the words Frankenfish, and SCI-FI in the same sentence. My train of thought shifts to...*Oh boy, another CGI-Shitfest from SCI-FI pictures*.
Not surprising, the mad monsterfish in this movie is CGI. What is surprising, is that the movie was actually pretty good, and one of SCI-FIs best movies of this year.


Review-A series of brutal murders are taking place in the Louisiana bayou. The police suspect a shark, however, theres something much nastier and larger at work here. The film starts off with a nice bloody killing by the monster fish. This is usually not your typical SCI-FI movie, due to the fact that they practically edit out most of the violence in practically all of their films. However in this movie, we get some really nasty killings, which include people being decapitated, and ripped in half. After the first killings, a medical examiner (Kittles), and a wildlife agent (Chow), set out to find the animal responsible for the killings. They find a boat full of slaughtered people, and a large fish scale. Both are baffled, because there hasn't been any record of a fish that large for the scale to belong to. The monster fish attacks nearly killing both of them, but they manage to escape. A fisherman who accompanied them to the site however, isn't so lucky. After this, most of the film is spent in the setting of a lake house, where the fish has trapped the wildlife agent, the medical examiner, and a few other unlucky people. They manage to kill one fish after it takes a guys head off. However, theres still 2 more left. This fact is unknown to our heros however. Most of the group is picked off in gruesome fashion. Theres even one great scene where the fish leaps from the water, taking a woman in it's mouth, and then down to her ultimate doom. The second fish is killed via hunting rifle, leaving one more lurking about in the bayou waters. Near the end, it is revealed that a secret organization was responsible for creating these fish for sport hunting, using the age old playing god method of genetic engineering. Two men show up pretending to be of assistance to the examiner and the wildlife agent, but soon reveal their true intentions...To reclaim the fish, and eliminate the med. examiner and the wildlife agent since they know too much at this point. Both men are killed, and the fish nearly kills the wildlife agent and the examiner before it's cut to shreds by a swampboat motor. The ending is typical and cliche of killer mutant abominations of nature type movies, but it is well done and pretty hilarious.



Pros-Bloody, and gruesome. Tis what a killer mutant swampfish movie should be. None of this cutting away stuff, we get to see it all here. I also liked the characters, most of them were very well written, and didn't get on my nerves any. The swamp setting was also nice, and the fishes while they clearly looked CGI, still worked very well as the hungry antagonists.


Cons-The frankenfish were some of the worst CGI I'd ever scene. I really wish they would've used a created by hand model at some point, atleast once in the film. Also these people who created the fish, not much background info on them is given. Were supposed to believe that some middle aged guys from the swamp were able to easily obtain the materials, and connections needed to create these monstrosities? If it were that easy, we'd all have mutant creationsof some kind running loose.


Overall-A very good creature feature. Better than the entire slate of crap SCI-FI has shown at 9pm on Saturday nights this whole year, from January till now.
I would say that this may be a step in the right direction for SCI-FI, but as son as I say that, I'm sure their next film will reinforce why they suck so much. Speaking of their next film, it's a movie about CGI gargoyles.