voleli ste SIGNS? onda...

[Ghoul]

...ne propustite ovo:

SILENT WARNINGS

Starring Billy Zane, A.J. Buckley, Callie De Fabry, and Stephen Baldwin


Directed By Christian McIntire


Any similarity between SILENT WARNINGS and SIGNS is completely intentional. Shamelessly so. It doesn't steal from SIGNS as much as CARNOSAUR 2 ripped-off ALIENS scene for scene but about the only real differences here are that Mel Gibson's farm family has been replaced with a bland group of good looking college-aged types, there's a little T&A, a dash of gore,[BAREM TO!] and the budget was probably roughly equivalent to the cost of catering SIGNS. The movie also seems to be splicing M. Night's slow reveal directing style with the mechanics of a generic slasher movie.  


A better title may have been CRAP CIRCLES since there really isn't a whole lot of nice things I can say about SILENT WARNINGS. I just have little patience for terrible movies that are made simply to cash in on a particular Hollywood blockbuster that do little more than blatantly rip-off the original movie without bringing anything innovative to the table.


Despite their names being displayed prominently on the box art for SIGNS don't be fooled into thinking that Billy Zane and Stephen Baldwin are the stars of the movie. In fact, Baldwin only appears in the movie's first 5 minutes and very briefly again later via videotape and Zane only shows up very briefly 2-3 times until playing a prominent role in the movie's climax. Both are only minor supporting characters. The overwhelming majority of the movie focuses on the group of college-age friends at the center of the plot.


Can someone explain to me exactly what happened to Billy Zane's career? Is he like Samson? Did losing his hair cost him his star power?  He goes from starring in THE PHANTOM and co-starring in TITANIC to having what amounts to little more than a cameo as a cop in a movie as lame as this? The man deserves better. [or not ]


The badness begins right off the bat courtesy of Stephen Baldwin doing the single worst "crazy Randy Quaid" impression ever seen or heard by mankind     . Fortunately, this jaw-dropping bit of bad overacting is over after a few minutes. Then we are introduced to the incredibly bland group of young actors as they venture out to Baldwin's house that just happens to be smack dab in the middle of a cornfield. One of the personality-free twenty-something types is the brother or the nephew of the Baldwin character. I forget which. What matters is that he's related to Baldwin's character and has come to settle his estate or something like that. None of that really matters because it's barely discussed . It's really just an excuse to get these characters to stay at his house in the cornfield so that they can discover crop circles out in the fields and then mysterious creatures begin to stalk and kill them.


As I said, the movie wants to have the slow build of SIGNS while occasionally employing the cheap scares of a slasher flick. Problem is, the slow build is just incredibly slow and boring as virtually nothing of interest happens for long periods of time and the cheap scares are more cheap than scary.  Nothing like a tedious, slow moving sci-fi horror movie that tries to shock you awake every now and then with very little success. Until the last 10 minutes SILENT WARNINGS is a real snooze.


Then comes the movie's finale where it's a good thing the movie was already a lost cause or else this would have completely killed it. The aliens look just like the ones you'll see on the cover of a Whitley Strieber book or in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS except brought to life via the absolute worst CGI effects work I have ever seen. I simply cannot put into words just how completely unconvincing these extraterrestrials look. I cannot comprehend why low budget genre makers would rather use bottom of the barrel of the barrel CGI to bring a monster to life rather than use a guy in a suit. An actor in a monster costume may not be 100% realistic but at least it looks tangible and won't move in a clunky unnatural manner like it came out of an 80's video game. They're not even laughably bad. They're just plain bad.  


Oh, just like in SIGNS, there's a natural element that proves to be the alien's biggest weakness only this one is even more impractical [UBIJA IH KUKURUZ?]. Still, anyone who hates SIGNS should be tied to a chair and forced to endure SILENT WARNINGS. You may still hate SIGNS afterwards but you're practically guaranteed to develop a new appreciation for M. Night.  


Did I mention this movie was made by UFO Films, the same company responsible for PYTHON, DEEP SHOCK, DRAGON FIGHTER, and ANTIBODY among others and originally premiered on the Sci-Fi Channel earlier this year? Well, this movie certainly had "quality" written all over it, didn't it?