Sometimes, a movie is just a vehicle for a cool monster idea you had—it’s a time-honoured tradition, really, maybe as old as the genre itself, and it became even more noticeable when superstar effects and make-up people started getting the clout to direct their own movies (is it not what Zeiram or Pumpkinhead was, ultimately?) For as highbrow as I like to position myself on this, a site about monsters, I also enjoy just seeing a neat monster concept in action, even it doesn’t without go for any deep commentary on the world from which the monster emerged (not that it won’t stop me from trying to mine for it.) In the end, we are all fans of monster movies because we like the monsters themselves, with everything else just adding some additional spice to the proceedings. The risk in that proposal is that, with everything else in the story primarily serving as a conduit for the monster ideas, the execution of that monster better be there, and that monster better be something truly out there and original, because you have nothing else to latch on to. The independently-made Splinter is an example of that sort of movie, and thankfully, it succeeds in both the originality and execution of its monster, making for a swift, raw horror experience.
Director Toby Wilkins works mostly in short films (his only other feature length project is The Grudge 3, which he was offered entirely because of Splinter), as well as an editor of mostly TV projects, and this movie feels like an extended short film (although at 82 minutes, it’s not a particularly lengthy movie), straightforward in purpose and moving efficiently between shock images. It uses the tried-and-true base under siege format that has served monster movies so well since The Thing From Another World, a classic scenario that facilitates tension on an almost genetic level—although in this case, it’s a given more mundane edge by having said base be a gas station in the middle of the empty highways of Oklahoma (a location with enough stuff in it to benefit the action, but just small enough to be somewhat claustrophobic.) We are stuck with the very small cast for the vast majority of the movie, and in the tradition of these unpretentious horror flicks, they don’t have much in the way of depth, but it is still interesting to see what the stock horror characters of 2008 are compared to other decades. In this case, our two “normies” are young, white, borderline hipsters Polly (Jill Wagner, who mostly works in Hallmark movies) and Seth (Paulo Costanzo, who played the good guy alien on the Animorphs TV series), who end up cutting their romantic camping trip short because neither of them know how to pitch a tent. On their way to a motel, they are carjacked by convict Dennis (Shea Whigham, who has appeared in series like Boardwalk Empire and Fargo) and his drug-addled girlfriend Lacey (Rachel Kerbs) and forced to drive them to Mexico at gunpoint.
The character who gets the most detail is Dennis, who despite the whole “threaten people with a gun” thing and being the kind of criminal that a random police officer recognizes on sight (and also being disgusted by Seth’s masculine deficiencies), is over time shown to be somewhat of a noble crook who is just trying to look out for loved ones, especially Lacey, who is going through awful withdrawal as they both attempt to clean up and start a new life elsewhere. How bad is Lacey’s withdrawal? Not only is she disturbingly pallid, but in one scene she immediately decides that some random animal they hit is her lost puppy, and then attempts to reassure the splattered road kill and force Seth, a biology student, to “fix it.” That aside, there’s nothing particularly over-the-top about the characters here, the dialogue is naturalistic for the most part, and despite Seth’s habit of spouting random biology facts based on his surroundings, they pass the base level horror test of not being overly annoying. Turning Dennis into the ostensible hero of the movie is based in cliche, but I guess the only other path would have been for an equally cliche villain awaiting comeuppance—clearly, though, what they really wanted was a group of relatively normal people stuck in an absolutely abnormal situation.
This begins with the road kill scene, which aside from being sad and disgusting, also becomes the first sign that something is amiss when the carcass begins violently twitching. Since whatever they ran over not only blew out a tire (with some suspicious-looking spikes) and caused a coolant leak, their next stop is the gas station we in the audience saw in a pre-credits sequence where an attendant (wearing a hat that says “I ♥ Bikinis”) is attacked by what appears to be a rabid animal…so, not the fun place they were expecting! Whatever it is they’re dealing with asserts itself quickly, as the contorted body of the attendant attacks and seemingly kills Lacey, forcing the other three to lock themselves in the abandoned gas station. The rest of the movie follows them as they try to understand the nature of the threat, and while interpersonal tensions do boil over at points, Polly and Seth come to an understanding with Dennis fairly quickly, if only for practical reasons.
The threat in question is compared to a parasitic fungus, like mildew, that takes the form of black spikes that sprout from the body of the host organism, making for the movie’s signature visual—allowing any trace of the spikes into your system gives it the opportunity to infect the body and spread. It is entirely instinctual, seeking only to propagate itself through the nearest potential living hosts, and as we learn by the end of the movie, it tracks things only through heat signatures (the only reason Seth is a biology student is so he can provide the exposition to explain these things.) At its core, this parasitic entity’s effects are not so dissimilar to the classic elements of a zombie movie, which also have a tendency towards base under siege narrative—this even manages to include both the “person refuses to believe their loved one is undead” moment and a “one survivor secretly knows they are infected” subplot—and Splinter was made at a time when zombie movies were ascending in the zeitgeist again. The big difference is that this makes it very clear that the infected people are nothing but rather dead bodies being used as puppets by the infecting agent, their bodies bending and breaking in entirely unnatural ways as they clamber across the concrete around the gas pumps or on to the roof of the building. We see it try to stitch flesh together to fix bodies, and any individual part of the human body is controlled by the thing on its own, leading to two instances where a chunk of a hand (not even a whole hand like in Evil Dead II) scuttles around and attack things of their own accord, or another scene where Dennis’ spike-infected hand breaks itself.
Even with some surface similarities to other monster movies, the idea here (“creature concept” credited to Toby Wilkins and George Cawood) is certainly a new take on those ideas, tied together with the spiky nature of the thing that gives it a certain malicious flair. It helps that this is real deal body horror stuff, and as far as I can tell, almost all the effects are achieved practically, with the infected humans portrayed by gymnasts, mimes, and other stunt people to allow them to move and act in disturbing, borderline mindless ways, with additional puppets to portray things like the walking hands (there was only one moment that looked CGI to me, which shows incredible dedication to this sort of visual effects given the time this was made and the kind of things the story asks for.) Wilkins has said that he wanted a monster that didn’t know how human bodies were supposed to work, and that is certainly reflected in the horror moments of this movie. While it often moves very fast, though, nothing about this thing goes so extreme that it becomes completely unbelievable, which has been a consistent nagging issue with modern monster movies, especially ones where the creature is meant to look misshapen. The awkwardness of the thing’s initial movements in the decaying bodies of its victims makes the moments where it becomes deadly all the more effective. For an independently-made movie, these effects are very impressive, so much so that not even the very-of-its-time handheld shakycam cinematography gets in their way. Plus, if the monster itself isn’t horrific enough, they also throw in a scene where our protagonists have to sever an arm using only box cutters and a refrigerator door, also executed effectively.
The streamlined nature of the story and very clear “cool idea first and foremost” nature of the monster also means that they never get around to explaining where this fungal abomination-maker came from, and that in itself becomes an interesting choice. Just about the only thing they give us is a very early shot of a sign indicating that we’re around a “Experimental Extraction Field Site”, hinting that this thing may have been created or unleashed by something done by the oil industry, but while Oklahoma’s oil deposits are mentioned (mainly as an additional reason why they shouldn’t light a massive fire at the gas station in hopes of attracting attention), there’s nothing else to suggest that those things are connected with the monster at all. It is just as likely that the monster is a naturally-occurring mutation that’s just found a good opportunity to spread—and while the natural world doesn’t play too big a part in the main action, the movie begins with an infected animal carcass and ends with even more infected animal carcasses, accentuating the subtly massive scope of what has taken place. While most of our protagonists have escaped, and all evidence of the human infections apparently destroyed, this thing is still out there, and may be here to stay. The tenaciousness of this organism may just be a product of this being a monster-focused movie, but it makes it all the scarier when it’s all said and done.
REVIEW ALL MONSTERS 