Animal (2014)


REVIEWER RATING: 
5/10


Animal is the latest flick from the line of recent original productions by Chiller Films and normally I don't give their movies much personal attention, but being a fan of creature features and knowing this was also backed by Drew Barrymore's production outfit Flower Films, I figured I'd give it a look and went in expecting at least a decent effort. For the most part that's what I got, but the film's lack of originality is what really hurts it.

The movie basically starts out like countless others before it--with a group of young friends looking to camp/hike at some secluded wooded area. It's not long before this standard group of victims finds themselves being hunted by a mysterious creature. The remaining survivors somehow make it to a cabin, where they also encounter another small group of people. With little time and resources, the ensemble must find a way to either stop or kill the beast that's lurking outside. 

The gore is lacking and the death scenes are pretty tame for a movie like this (on top of it borrowing from many past genre efforts) but despite the poor script and slew of clichés it does have a couple things going for it and that's the semi-original looking creature and the fact that practical effects are used throughout most of the pic. Even the monster itself was clearly made with animatronics and a guy in a suit, which is something missing in creature features nowadays.

Though, I have to admit that the beast is kind of silly looking, as it seems to have the head of some kinda F'd up bird with a dark and hairy humanoid body that reminded me of a werewolf. I guess it was some kind of WereBird(?).  Either way from what I remember the movie really doesn't go into what the thing is or where it came from. In fact the movie doesn't really go into much detail about anything, especially the characters, so whether or not they died made no difference to me.

Animal is a tame and poorly written creature feature, but it does have a couple things going for it--the creature is decent and they stick with practical effects for a majority of the movie. Aside from that, this offers nothing we haven't already seen before.
OVERALL: 
Animal is a tame and poorly written creature feature, but it does have a couple things going for it--the creature is decent and they stick with practical effects for a majority of the movie. Aside from that, this offers nothing we haven't already seen before.


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