Shrieker is set in the small American town of Westbrook where university student Clark (Tanya Dempsey) is looking for some really cheap digs, fellow university student Zak (Jamie Gannon) tells Clark of Greenhaven Hospital which has been abandoned & empty for 50 odd years & that he & four other students are squatting there. Zak invites Clark to join them which since the rent is free is too good an offer to turn down, also living there is David (Parry Shen), Mike (Chris Boyd), Tanya (Alison Cuffe) & Elaine (Jenya Lano). Things get spooky straight away, the first night Clark hears a chilling shrieking noise & also finds ancient symbols written on the floor which happen to summon an ancient demon known as a shrieker which needs five sacrificial offerings for the one who summoned it to be able to control it & the squatting students are as good a sacrifices as anyone else...
Directed by David DeCoteau under the pseudonym of Victoria Sloan (now we know why there's so many gay jokes here) this is yet another cheap Full Moon Pictures production from Charles Band, to be fair to it Shrieker isn't as bad as one might expect but it's definitely not something one would call good. While watching Shrieker it's hard to not notice the glaring similarities between it & Jacques Tourneur's classic Night of the Demon (1957) with it's plot about someone raising a demon from hell & having to pass people slips of paper with ancient incantations on them so the demon will kill them & the only way to stop it is to give the piece of paper to another willing person, co-incidence? I doubt it. The script by Benjamin Carr takes itself very seriously & is far too slow, apart from a brief opening sequence when the Shrieker is seen it doesn't make an appearance again until the 40 odd minute mark. So basically in that 40 odd minutes we learn that this assorted bunch of students are squatting in a disused hospital & one of them is messing about summoning up demons from hell & sacrificing their buddies, this really needed more pace & purpose because the story is weak & pretty predictable. The one thing that saves Shrieker from being totally worthless in my opinion is the mystery surrounding just who the traitor is & why they are summoning up a demon, there's a reasonable double twist ending which is OK but the Shrieker creature is far too easily defeated.
Director DeCoteau, sorry Sloan does OK, it's reasonably well lit & there's an alright spooky old house type atmosphere. The Shrieker itself is only ever seen in quick cuts, in fact you'll get a better look at the creature on the video cover on the IMDb's main page for Shrieker than in the actual film itself. The special make-up effects on it look pretty good so I don't really know why the makers were so afraid to show it. Forget about any decent gore as there isn't any, there's a few dead bodies covered in blood but nothing else. One thing I wondered while watching Shrieker was that if the hospital had been abandoned for over 50 years why was the electricity still turned on?
Technically the film is good, surprisingly shot in full 2:35:1 widescreen it looks nice enough & has reasonable production values considering it's a Full Moon production. The acting is OK but nothing particularly memorable.
Shrieker was better than I expected because of one or two decent plot twists but please don't take that as any sort of resounding recommendation because it isn't. Average at best really, it could have been a lot worse but at the same time it could have been a lot better.
Directed by David DeCoteau under the pseudonym of Victoria Sloan (now we know why there's so many gay jokes here) this is yet another cheap Full Moon Pictures production from Charles Band, to be fair to it Shrieker isn't as bad as one might expect but it's definitely not something one would call good. While watching Shrieker it's hard to not notice the glaring similarities between it & Jacques Tourneur's classic Night of the Demon (1957) with it's plot about someone raising a demon from hell & having to pass people slips of paper with ancient incantations on them so the demon will kill them & the only way to stop it is to give the piece of paper to another willing person, co-incidence? I doubt it. The script by Benjamin Carr takes itself very seriously & is far too slow, apart from a brief opening sequence when the Shrieker is seen it doesn't make an appearance again until the 40 odd minute mark. So basically in that 40 odd minutes we learn that this assorted bunch of students are squatting in a disused hospital & one of them is messing about summoning up demons from hell & sacrificing their buddies, this really needed more pace & purpose because the story is weak & pretty predictable. The one thing that saves Shrieker from being totally worthless in my opinion is the mystery surrounding just who the traitor is & why they are summoning up a demon, there's a reasonable double twist ending which is OK but the Shrieker creature is far too easily defeated.
Director DeCoteau, sorry Sloan does OK, it's reasonably well lit & there's an alright spooky old house type atmosphere. The Shrieker itself is only ever seen in quick cuts, in fact you'll get a better look at the creature on the video cover on the IMDb's main page for Shrieker than in the actual film itself. The special make-up effects on it look pretty good so I don't really know why the makers were so afraid to show it. Forget about any decent gore as there isn't any, there's a few dead bodies covered in blood but nothing else. One thing I wondered while watching Shrieker was that if the hospital had been abandoned for over 50 years why was the electricity still turned on?
Technically the film is good, surprisingly shot in full 2:35:1 widescreen it looks nice enough & has reasonable production values considering it's a Full Moon production. The acting is OK but nothing particularly memorable.
Shrieker was better than I expected because of one or two decent plot twists but please don't take that as any sort of resounding recommendation because it isn't. Average at best really, it could have been a lot worse but at the same time it could have been a lot better.