Swamp Devil (2008)

I've previously seen several other movies from this production company (RHI), and those movies were pretty bad. "Swamp Devil" is not much better than usual for this company. For a low budget movie, it is lit and shot fairly well. Some of the special effects are also not bad for a low budget. And Bruce Dern does add a little life, but not even his talents can save the movie. Monster fans will be disappointed that there is almost no blood and no gore at all, and there's nothing in the nudity and sex department. But what sinks the movie is the script, which has a number of unanswered questions. Why can't the monster cross the county line? How was the person exactly transformed into a swamp devil? Why did the monster wait so long to get revenge against the Bruce Dern character? What is the exact relationship the swamp monster has with the diner owner? And how is what happens in the final scene possible? Clearly this was an unfinished screenplay, and should have been worked on A LOT more before shooting began.

This film was okay. I did like the story concept but the action scenes were way off. The concept was that a girl return to her hometown to try and help find her dad who is suspected in lots of crimes around the town. When she meets a guy she learns that he is not who he seems to be. He has been after her father and will do anything to get his hands on her. I thought the scenes with the swamp like creature were computer generated instead of made out of twigs,vines, and a lot of other stuff. I thought that the creature looked okay but when it was fighting it looked like the thing from the film Man-thing. Because it kicked everyone's butts and scared lots of people around the town limits. I was happy that everything turned out okay in the ending of the film. But it was scary when the hand came out of the water and then came out it's head, it's back and out for blood again!

Bruce Dern (!) gets top billing in this no-budget, made-for-cable clunker about a murderous swamp monster (looking suspiciously at times like Swamp Thing or Man-Thing). A young woman returns to her hometown to find out what happened to her missing dad, a former sheriff suspected in a series of gruesome killings. An odd fellow about her age pops up out of nowhere and befriends her, while the local constabulary and a gun-toting local almost kill her upon her arrival. She eventually finds her dad (Dern) hiding in the woods, and together they fight the creature. The creature is typical SyFy Channel CGI, and not particularly intimidating or scary-looking. The director shows way too much of it, and way too early on. Acting is par for the genre. A snoozer, ideal for those having trouble sleeping.

What do actors do when they get old and they have bills to pay. In Bruce Dern's case, you make Swamp Devil.Dern adds a touch of class to an extremely low budget, low key "horror" movie, filmed in forest-y locations (not the sort of place where you would normally expect to find swamps, I felt), with a cast of several, and special effects which bring a whole new meaning to the word "special." Plotwise there is absolutely nothing exceptional here whatsoever. The very attractive but otherwise underwhelming Cindy Sampson, in the throes of being reconciled with her estranged (and wanted for murder) father Bruce Dern becomes involved with what turns out to be an unpleasant individual which passes itself off as human (and is exactly the person you expected even though you weren't supposed to expect it was him) and, the rest of the time, as a bad CGI-d bloke made of brambles.The horror isn't very horrifying, the suspense isn't very suspenseful, and the whole thing is just about an adequate time passer, but only because of Dern's class and Sampson's status as eye candy.