SKIN WALKERS

REVIEWED BY CHARITY BISHOP

Our rating: 2 out of 5

Because of: violence

Rated:

I am not a huge fan of the werewolf genre but Skin Walkers might just be the best film I have ever seen on the subject. True, some of the logic is missing and it seems at times more like a horror piece than a series look at the legends behind skin walkers, but it's extremely well acted, scored, and the CGI is awesome. In a word, it's cool.

For centuries, the family of twelve year old Timothy (Matthew Knight) has been torn apart by a horrific curse: they are werewolves, destined to transform beneath a full moon and ravage the countryside in an eternal quest for blood. Some skin walkers give in to the urge, feed on human flesh, and become savage, unrecognizable characters of darkness, while others resist their natural urges, chain themselves away before the moon rises, and hope for the solution that will inevitably save them -- the coming of a boy destined to end the curse. That boy is Timothy, ruthlessly hunted by his enemies, lead by the bloodthirsty Varek (Jason Behr). Attempting to protect the boy until his thirteenth birthday, when he will be able to break the curse, are the extended members of his family -- his uncle Jonas (Elias Koteas), his cousin Katherine (Sarah Carter), and her boyfriend Adam (Shawn Roberts).

The only person who does not know the truth is his mother, Rachel (Rhona Mitra), until Varek and his companions show up and blow the town to pieces, managing to kill several members of her family and forcing them to escape in the back of a van driven by their trusted friend Will (Tom Jackson). Time is running out and all of their lives are in peril, but the most important thing to is make certain Timothy lives past midnight. The result is a big-scale action film with a tight budget that did not waste a single cent. The scenery is gorgeous. The acting is fabulous. The fight scenes are fantastic.

It's fairly safe to assume that if you are not a fan of these style of films, which include such titles as Underworld and The Coven, you probably will not like what you find here: it's all humans morphing into vampires, big scale battles with silver-lined bullets, and occasionally traumatic deaths even though the ending is surprisingly positive. The script is fairly simple but that allows the audience to follow along without much effort and lose themselves in the special effects and character development. With an amazing lack of conscious thought, I realized that I knew a lot about the main individuals and cared what happened to them. There are a couple of twists that you can see coming, but the film tries its hardest to remain light on content and stays within a PG13, even though there is some language and violence, not to mention implied sexual content. In order to get the rating, portions of the movie were edited down to reach a wider audience, but one partial f-word remains, along with a use of GD.

A nude sex scene was removed but head and shoulders shots of it still remain, shown in fast flashes during a montage of bad werewolf behavior -- violence, feasting, and fairly steamy sex against a wooded backdrop. There is a ton of violence but none of it is overly gruesome -- we know people have been shot and killed, but there is no blood spatter or graphic bullet impact. Characters are shot at close range; dead bodies are found in a hospital. Sometimes a fist will swing or a bullet fly toward the camera before all goes black. There is a big body count. A hawk flies into a car windshield, causing a horrific crash. One man has his neck broken.

All of the good guys risk their lives to make certain Timothy lives through his ordeal, and certain of the villains also display momentary flickers of compassion. In the end, Timothy represents something of "salvation" for the werewolves who choose to transform into humans once more. It's a stretch to find the Christian parallels, but they are nevertheless present in the selfless actions of the child, who believes some good can be found in even the blackest of souls. When confronted with killing someone to save himself, Timothy chooses not to, a remarkable decision from such a young boy. It's not a movie that will be remembered by the masses, but one that for fans of the genre is not likely to be soon forgotten.