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Review

Tobe Hooper’s newest direct-to-DVD feature further demonstrates his fall from grace as one of the former masters of modern horror. The director of such genre classics as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Poltergeist is now reduced to bringing fans a low-budget mess of a film involving a mutant killer, vomiting zombies, and a Lovecraftian monster, none of which are nearly as fun as they sound.

Denise Crosby ("Star Trek: The Next Generation") plays single mother Leslie Doyle who moves her sarcastic high school son Jonathan and immature daughter Jamie to a mortuary in a small California town in order to practice her trade. The mortuary is accompanied by a graveyard, the overall setting so outrageous that the family’s relocation can only exist in a horror film. Bobby Fowler, the town’s boogeyman with a tortured past, supposedly resides in a nearby tomb, but he’s hardly a threat next to the unexplained vines that creep out of the mortuary’s drainpipes turning the town’s residents into zombies. The fate of the family is eventually left in the hands of young Jonathan and his new townie friends, but a complete lack of tension and suspense creates a high degree of indifference in the minds of the film’s viewers.

Its disheartening to hear Hooper speak of this production with a level of confidence and adoration in the disc’s “making-of” featurette. The film is almost completely devoid of style and the little crowd-pleasing gore it has going for it is quickly forgotten amidst its many annoyances. While The Hills Have Eyes’ Dan Byrd does a fine job as Jonathan, newcomer Stephanie Patton, who is quite visibly an eight year old attempting to play a role half her age, hands in an excruciating performance as his sister. None of the supernatural elements are explained, especially the underground dwelling monster that the zombies worship. If horror fans stick through the first hour of the film they will surely be reaching for the remote by the time young Jamie gives the crazy killer a Twizzler and a Frankenstein-like relationship is established. Never mind the lights, this is the type of horror film to watch with the television off.

 -- Eric Bresler