Skinwalkers Sneak Peek Movie Review

Skinwalkers
Release Date - August 10th, 2007
Starring - Elias Koteas, Jason Behr
Run Time - 85 minutes

I was unfortunate enough to be invited to a sneak peek at Skinwalkers, the latest horror flick to come out of the Stan Winston Studios. Hearing Winston's (special effects wizard behind Alien, Terminator, and the greatly underappreciated Pumpkinhead to name a few) name attached to this project gave me a bit of hope for this flick but those hopes were very quickly dashed.

The movie revolves around a 12-year-old boy who is only a few days away from his 13th birthday. We find out that he is a half breed, his mother being human and his father a werewolf (that must have made for an interesting honeymoon). The mother believes that her husband was killed and is blissfully unaware that her son is special even though everyone else in the small town that they live in knows. Almost all the people in the town are good werewolves (they strap themselves into straightjacket type harnesses during the full moon so that they cannot get out and feed on humans) and their sole purpose is to protect the boy until his 13th birthday at which time he will free them all from their wolf curse. They are led by Jonas (Elias Koteas) who is the boy's uncle.

On the other side there are the evil skinwalkers. Bad wolves that live for the thrill of the kill and don't want it to end. They are out to try and kill the boy so that they can continue with their bloodthirsty rampage. They are led by Varek (played by Jason Behr, best known for his turn on TV's Roswell). He and his 3 friends set out to find and destroy the boy aided along the way by an all-seeing eagle...honestly; I couldn't make this up if I wanted to.

What follows are a number of shootouts between the two clans. They show their anger by apparently popping in some painful looking red contact lenses. We very rarely see any of the character in full werewolf make-up and when we finally do, you almost wish for the gun fights again. I was really disappointed at the make-up effects which were the one thing I was counting on from the Winston Studios, but they looked very low budget, and the acting all around was just plain horrible.