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 o
a certain extent reviewing a film like
"Frankenfish", with its lurid box art
and a title that only genre fans or those with a
healthy sense of irony could love, is an exercise
in futility. Indeed, it seems rather pointless to
argue the merits of a film whose basic premise
revolves around a bunch of rich hunters who decide
to create the ultimate quarry by genetically
altering Chinese snakeheads. The truth is, no
matter how much praise is heaped upon it, the
average fan, unless suitably inebriated, is
unlikely to touch "Frankenfish" with a
ten foot pole. By the same token, its target
audience, which to be fair probably includes the
drunk and desperate, are not exactly known for
their discriminating taste, and any criticism, no
matter how savage, will quite rightly be viewed as
par for the course.
With this in mind, the only
real way to judge "Frankenfish" is by
the standards of its peers, and from this
perspective the movie is a surprising success, and
one of the few genre films to distinguish itself
from the grim swamp of the direct-to-rental market
for some time. If nothing else, the production
values are reasonably high, giving it a much
better look than is normally associated with films
of this ilk, mostly since it manages to avoid
wallowing in the usual cheap computer effects
which rob so many 'nature runs amok' efforts of
any Z-grade charm they may have had. This in
itself is quite surprising, given that the film
comes from Mark Dippe, a visual effects wizard
whose first foray into directing was the
astonishingly awful "Spawn", which
drowned its characters in unconvincing CGI,
earning him the hatred of comic book fans
everywhere.
The plot of
"Frankenfish", such as it is, takes
place deep in the
Louisiana
bayou where a police coroner played by the
wonderfully named Tory Kittles is called in to
investigate a series of strange deaths which bear
none of the trademarks of the usual alligator
attacks. Soon enough, he finds himself trapped in
a backwater houseboat community, trying
desperately to keep the locals and himself off the
menu as the monster fish pick them off one by one.
The narrative quite neatly
combines elements from "Anaconda",
"
Lake Placid
", and most obviously, "Tremors",
from which it actually borrows several scenes.
Still, it does so in an entertaining, trashy and
cheerful manner which has no pretensions to
providing anything other than lowest common
denominator fun. As such, Dippe is able to keep
things moving along at a good pace, never having
to worry too much about explanations for the
ludicrous affair, relying on viewer familiarity to
allow him to simply throw in scene after scene of
people being devoured, explosions, and
astoundingly gratuitous nudity. The story is
eminently predictable and devoid of sympathetic or
indeed realistic characters, though this in itself
is by no means unexpected, and never gets in the
way of the film's modest ambitions.
Dippe's direction is tight,
if unspectacular, and he manages to wring a few
tense moments out of the situation without ever
taking things too seriously. The fact that most of
the characters have 'kill me' tattooed on their
foreheads means that the enjoyment comes from
trying to guess when, rather than if they will
die, though since thankfully none of the cast are
inordinately annoying, this is by no means a bad
thing. The vast majority of the film takes place
either at night or in the murky waters of the
swamp, and Dippe exploits the setting well,
getting a fair amount of cheap scare mileage out
of the fish leaping suddenly from the shadows.
The special effects are
generally of a reasonable standard, with the
monster fish being a pleasing mixture of CGI and
rubbery models. The result is surprisingly
convincing, and is actually superior to many
bigger budgeted features, such as the lame "Anacondas:
Hunt for the Blood Orchid". The film
contains a fair amount of gore, most of which is
similarly well handled under Dippe's direction,
including a couple of fairly spectacular
decapitations which help to keep things
interesting.
The fact that Dippe does
indeed manage to keep "Frankenfish" from
becoming a bore throughout, and manages to
distract the viewer from caring too much about the
plainly routine plotting is no small feat, and
helps to make "Frankenfish" a genuinely
enjoyable affair. Straightforward, reasonably well
made and with enough visceral content to keep
genre fans happy, for anyone looking for a film
about killer mutant fish, "Frankenfish"
would be the one to go for. |
