Décharnés

With an interesting and not entirely unoriginal premise, I thought this movie had potential. Evidently, any potential that might have been present was quickly squandered by shoddy acting and even shoddier writing. The one redeeming quality about this one was that the creature was actually pretty freaky looking, and wasn't insultingly cheap. It's backstory, however, was as cheap as it gets and went completely unexplained. The rest of the film was muddled drivel and hardly worth the paper it was written on - it certainly is not worth your time. Look elsewhere.

Did like the concept a fair bit, even if it was a familiar one and has been very variably. The title 'Discarnate' (if the title was indeed 'Shapeshifter', as generic it may sound, it would have been a much better title and would have given a much better indication of what to expect) was a head-scratcher and personally wasn't sure what to make of the trailer, which indicated a quite well done monster but also very familiar ground and not being particularly scary. So wasn't expecting very much really from 'Discarnate' but watched it anyway when it appeared as oddly enough an IMDb recommendation. Watching 'Discarnate', it is not a complete waste, is a little better than what has been said in the reviews (though do agree with a lot with what has been said) and has its moments but was more the less what was expected and indicated from the trailer and is not a particularly good film. Beginning with the good, 'Discarnate' looks reasonably good, have seen far worse and cheaper production values recently and not only those of films made on a very low budget but also ones made on a similar one or even a bigger one. The monster surprisingly does not look bad, could actually see the effort and it looks creepy in alternative to cheap. The monster is also the component that makes the film by default, there is no unintentional humour here and there is a creepiness about it. There were parts where the acting was okay, where the actors looked like they knew what they were doing and were giving it all they had. Josh Stewart is the best of the bunch. The music is suitably eerie. Moving onto the too many things that were not done well, and not just a little but not at all, most of the time the acting was poor with a very stiff and disengaged lead actress. The characters are thinly sketched and there are too many instances of stupid and sometimes illogical behaviour and decision making that makes one endear to them even less. The script is as flabby as a damp squib with a lot of clunky script that never flows like silk. Had no trouble following the story, a pretty simple one in a way, but nothing new was done with such an over-familiar premise and instead of thrills, tension or suspense (far too little of all three) there are just far too many dead stretches and plot contrivances. Making it a hopelessly bland and forced film, capped off by running badly out of steam at the end, which is nonsensical and anti-climactic. In conclusion, not awful but very lacklustre. 4/10

May have spoilers. Dr. Mason (Thomas Kretschmann) loses his son Benny (Jake Vaughn) to a monster only Benny can see. 10 years later he contacts Maya Sanchez (Nadine Velazquez) who gives him her grandmother's tea which allows a person to "open the door" and go to the other side. He convinces her to sell him the tea so they can extract the substance and create a serum for an experiment. Maya agrees, only if she can be a part of it. The field test ends up at Dr. Mason's old home, something he doesn't reveal to the group. They all shoot up and... The reason for the experiment was to confirm the existence of an afterlife, however, it moves off on a Nokken tangent as the two worlds co-exist. Scares, thrills, and acting are on par for a "B" film. Thank you for not making this a found footage. Guide: F-word. No sex or nudity.

Horror movie about a scientific experiment in an abandoned house using a drug that opens a doorway to another dimension. No shortage of cheap scares here, every few minutes we're seeing ghosts or other horrific images. Some of these are ok, others aren't. In fact we see so much that it becomes boring and predictable after a while. Visually it is ok, sadly let down by a plot that becomes difficult to follow, or even remain interested in. Nadine Velázquez looks pretty hot throughout!