SHADOWZONE
A film review by Ken Johnson
Copyright 1992 Ken Johnson
88 min., R, Horror/Science Fiction, 1989 Director: J.S. Cardone Cast: David Beecroft, James Hong, Shawn Weatherly, Miguel Nunez, Lu Leonard, Frederick Flynn, Louise Fletcher, Maureen Flaherty, Robbie Rives
In an isolated complex under the ground, a group of scientists, who are doing experiments with dreams accidentally kill one of the volunteers. David Beecroft gets sent to investigate the death. When he arrives there, he finds out that the scientists have released a monster from a dream dimension into the complex by mistake. All of them are stuck under the ground while the monster slaughters them.
SHADOWZONE is done by Full Moon Entertainment and is distributed by Paramount home video. SHADOWZONE is a rather well done horror film, that has some slight problems. I recommend this film to people who liked the ALIEN series. On a scale of zero to five, I give SHADOWZONE a three. SHADOWZONE is rated R for female nudity, male nudity, explicit language, and graphic violence.
SHADOWZONE was released in 1989, but my local video store just recently obtained it. SHADOWZONE was never released theatrically, I have heard that none of the Full Moon Entertainment films are ever released to the theaters. The biggest problem with SHADOWZONE is that, although it seems to try hard to be original, it looks to me like a rip-off of ALIEN. It has the animal element, this time a monkey, but the monster is different. This monster can change it's size (and many other things).
For the most part the characters were well written. The person who I think the writers goofed with was James Hong's character. For a smart scientist, he seems to do some rather stupid things. The actors/actresses all do a great job however, which makes the movie all that more enjoyable. Another problem with the film is that the monster comes through a dream door from a dream dimension. For me it is a bit hard to accept the fact that a dream dimension can send material objects into the real world (although the film somewhat covers that aspect).
Another problem with the film is that I felt ripped off with the ending. It doesn't fit with the continuity of the film and looks like it was hastily written. They should have worked harder on the ending. The film did, however, make the underground laboratory seem spooky and foreboding.
Ken J. blj@mithrandir.cs.unh.edu
.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews