The Bone Snatcher (2003)

Director: Jason Wulfsohn

Writers: Malcolm Kohll, Gordon Render

Composers: Paul Heard, Mike Pickering

Starring: Scott Bairstow, Rachel Shelley, Warrick Grier, Patrick Shai, Andre Weideman, Adrienne Pierce, Patrick Lyster, Brian Claxton Payne, Sean Higgs, Jan Ellis, Langley Kirkwood, Lulama J. Nombiba

More info: IMDb

Tagline: It will scare you out of your skull.

Plot: After miners disappear in the Namib Desert, some scientists find their remains and the demonic creature that killed them.

My rating: 6.5/10

Will I watch it again? No.

I checked this one out at the behest of a friend and he was right.  It's pretty good. There's a weak link in some of the acting but the location and creature design and effects are great.  You don't see too many horror pictures that take place entirely in the desert.  It's probably a bitch to shoot but it makes for good drama when you consider a desert is mostly dead with little or nothing growing in it and a supreme lack of water.  Then there's the bazillion miles from nowhere scenario so if something happens you're pretty fuckin' screwed.  Add to that the thing that's killing off the team one by one.  The design of it is fantastic and I especially like that it's flat in sheen rather than glossy.  Horror creatures are often shiny and slimy and shit but not these guys.  They're badass and the CGI, especially considering it was over a decade ago and it's a low budget picture, are great.  The second half of the film settles in and drags a bit, plus you've got fewer characters and it's mostly at night.  That could have been fixed in the story. You have to work harder when you go from daylight to night and you've lost most of your cast.  It's at that magical 90 minute mark and, considering the slower pacing of the final third, it could probably have stood a few minutes trimmed to tighten it up.  Still, it's a pretty good movie and worth checking out for horror fans looking for a lower budget that tries and succeeds in delivering the goods. The First Look DVD has a nice anamorphic widescreen print with the extras being fullscreen trailers for this film, HOLLYWOOD NORTH and BETWEEN STRANGERS.