SKINWALKERS

They live among us, surround us, and observe us daily: they are Skinwalkers, an ancient race of creatures cursed to transform into bloodthirsty werewolves on full moon nights. The curse has lasted for centuries, and among the Skinwalkers, a difficult internal feud has arisen: some of them have decided to dedicate themselves to good and live peacefully with humans, while others refuse to suppress their instincts and continue to hunt humans to satisfy their desire to feed. Now, after hundreds of years, a prophecy capable of ending this curse is about to arrive: the day a half-breed turns thirteen years old, the Skinwalkers will return to being human. However, the group of rebel werewolves, not intending to renounce their nature, has decided to track down the child who can nullify the curse. Let's put it this way: you've had a tough day, not everything went as you hoped, and at the end of the day, you feel the need to switch off your brain, sit in front of the TV, and enjoy a pleasant comedy to have a good laugh and temporarily forget the day's difficulties. If things have turned out more or less like this, you will find yourself at a crossroads where it's hard to make an immediate decision: either you dig up from your film collection a cult classic like "Giovannona coscia lunga, disonorata con onore," or you can watch this "Skinwalkers," which, in its own way, won't take long to be just as entertaining. The moments of strong laughter, especially in the first part of the film, are abundant and happy. If this had been a horror-comedy with absurd twists, the film could have been considered a success, but since the movie doesn't make comedy its focus and prefers to adopt extremely serious tones, the final result we are offered cannot be anything other than that of an abominable work saturated with unintentional comedy. In those few moments of lucidity when the viewer is not busy holding back laughter due to the absurd events that follow for about ninety minutes, they will be led to reflect and even feel sorry to notice so much squalor in a film about werewolves. This subgenre, in fact, throughout the history of cinema (starting from the distant 1935, when the convincing Henry Hull played the role of the werewolf), has been able to offer us films of inestimable value and capable of marking, each in its own way, our genre. Recently, however, things seem to have changed a lot for those who howl at the pallor of the moon, since, with rare exceptions necessary to confirm the rule (see the convincing "Dog Soldiers" by Neil Marshall), this subgenre seems to have totally lost its vigor in the attempt to contaminate—excessively forced, perhaps—the latest fashionable action horror. But sometimes, from such a union, it is possible to see something sufficiently convincing born (the two "Underworld," for example), while in others, there is nothing else to do but feel disgust and sadness in impotently witnessing this generational change that confirms with force that works like "An American Werewolf in London" or "The Howling" (to name two of the most famous) are now only a memory of the past. With "SkinWalkers," James Isaac ("Jason X") directs a mess that seems to have no limit to the boundaries of ugliness and seems, rather, to enjoy the ridiculous (and at times pathetic) theater staged to represent this alternative story of werewolves. In addition to the already mentioned amount of unintentional humor (the ridiculous shootout in the country similar to a far west, which seems directly extracted from the brilliant "Hot Fuzz" by E. Wright—here the intent was anything but serious), the amateurish screenplay full of holes, inconsistencies (initially the werewolves seem mortal only to silver, later anything is good to kill them), and senseless sequences inserted at random (like the werewolf girl who is bitten by one of her kind and begins to show mood swings without any logical rigor) only makes the story, already unclear in itself, even more confusing. The only positive note (but can it be considered a true reason for interest?) would be given to the effective look used for the creation of the werewolves. The werewolves, when they abandon their questionable human appearance (motorcyclists in the style of hippies) at the rise of the full moon, take on the likeness of truly frightening animal-like creatures (the makeup effects are curated by the team led by the late Stan Winston), created with fascinating old-style tricks and capable of vaguely recalling the effective wolves that appeared in the still ugly "The Howling 2." The cast, despite featuring more than a few familiar faces (first and foremost Rhona Mitra from "Doomsday," who gives the impression of not fully understanding which film she is acting in), ends up being a soap bubble due to a total lack of depth offered to the characters, all just sketched and uncharismatic. The gore/splatter department appears obscenely poor (which would have certainly benefited such an operation) since all the murders are relegated to tamarissimes, and not even well-choreographed shootouts or annoying off-screen shots. All this is "SkinWalkers," and therefore, referring back to the opening dilemma, if you are still there undecided about which film to watch to have a good laugh (the Italian cult directed by Martino or this pseudo-nonsense directed by Isaac), we have now provided you with a general overview in the hope of best guiding your choice. If we are allowed to give our opinion, we recommend another viewing of the film with Edwige Fenech.