Review: Splinter

 In terms of B film gold, Splinter is an Academy award contender. Promising a similar tone (and label) to 2006's Slither, featuring Nathan Fillion, this bloodstained, humorous and original movie is what all movies of the genre aim to become. Though both pictures are cheap shlock of the highest quality that is where the characteristics end as Splinter need not plunder its ideas or design from any other intentions. The written material is, for the period as crisp as anyone could desire, and the performing is as astoundingly solid as we could imagine. Skip Saw V, or the barrage of Oriental horror re-makes, this is the type of movie you should race out and enjoy.

Of the amount of great successes that describe Splinter, the most energizing, as I alluded to before, is the stars. Not to imply that pictures of this kind never couple with skillful stars, only in this task not merely has novice director Toby Wilkins was able to forage up some creativity that asks "why are they not in a whole lot more pictures" only fills the film with only 4 of these actors. The film in its totality showcases 6 stars. Charles Baker as a condemned filling station worker, Laurel Whitsett as a town Sheriff. Not to spoil things, only only a pair of these actors exist very long to be considered as a main actor, and leaves you in a three guy movie; and what a movie.



The plot is elementary, as all B pictures are, as we discover Polly and Seth on an wedding holiday to the outdoors. Only after a terrible campsite arrangement, they choose to to call it a day and hibernate in a lodge, and they agree, is probably bedraggled to offset their unsuccessful wilderness encounter. While on track, they stop to assist an evidently stranded lady (Lacey) who is in fact a diversion for the crusty Dennis, so he  can carjack the wonderful couple. Picking Polly and Seth as hostages, their luck continue to worsen after they run over a unknown animal on the road, breaking the car. Scrambling to a nearby filling station they shortly find out that the abstraction they whacked is not a fluffy woodland animal, only a pointed ocean urchin, slimy leech-like contamination that absorbs and eliminates whatever it meets. The survivors block themselves in the filling station and try to derive a system to escape uneaten.


Contrary to many B horror movies, the raw effects work to Splinter's strengths. The creature's irregular and robotic motions and the use of fast cut editing really add a scary vibe to the movie.
The bottom line is, Splinter is a blast, and considerably more innovative than most of the fear flicks that are smacked on us annually..

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