Shriek
[a.k.a.
Shrieker]
Dir: "Victoria Sloan" [David Decoteau]
Star: Tanya Dempsey, Jamie Gannon, Parry Allen, Alison Cuffe
Perhaps the most telling thing on the
promo material for this video was the phrase "teen horror is a highly
profitable genre". Roughly translated, any cheaply made dreck will make its
money back. This one, however, may be pushing it: with no name stars, its
sole rentals may be from illiterates who mistake it for Scream. It won't
be helped by the fact that it's pretty dreadful: lock up a bunch of
students in a hospital, to be fodder for an extremely unconvincing monster
-- a rather more "lurking horror" approach would have helped greatly. The
only interesting touch is that one student has set the whole thing up, and
the victims all have 'Night of the Demon'-style occult papers, onto which the
monster homes in. This potentially interesting and paranoia-generating
angle is disposed of in about ten minutes however, and it all turns out
exactly how you'd expect. The main saving grace is that it's a scant 72
minutes from start to finish, so at least I don't feel that I wasted too
much time... [Released to rent by High Fliers]
E+