Animal (2014)

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Five young adults head into the wilderness for a weekend hiking excursion. But things go wrong in a hurry when they are targeted by a bloodthirsty creature. They make their way to an isolated cabin where a few other people (that have previously encountered the creature) are already holed up, in the tradition of "Night of the Living Dead" and "The Evil Dead".What we have here is an ultra-routine and ultra-familiar monster movie horror flick. Granted, sometimes a film can still work despite rigidly following a formula, but that is not the case here. "Animal" does have some engaging moments of humanity, numerous jolts, passable FX work (but an unimaginative-looking monster), a generous amount of splatter, and characters who can be annoying but are more or less likeable. Of course, there ALWAYS has to be an a-hole in the bunch, the person who might have some good points to make, but is consistently a prick about it. Amaury Nolasco ("A Good Day to Die Hard") is stuck in this cliched role, and you keep waiting and waiting for something nasty to happen to him.The cast doesn't rise above the material, but they fare well enough. Keke Palmer ("Akeelah and the Bee"), who also sings one of the closing credits numbers, is this viewers' personal favourite. Hunky German actor Thorsten Kaye ('All My Children') is fine as the biggest badass among the men. Lovely veteran actress Joey Lauren Adams ("Chasing Amy") is just wasting her time here.An excellent music score by "TomandAndy" and a blazing pace (this is only 82 minutes long) also help to make "Animal" palatable, but it gets no points for an ending that is, like so many other things here, cliched.Produced by Drew Barrymores' company "Flower Films"!Five out of 10.

Five friends travel to the woods for hiking. They find the entrance closed but they trespass the gate. Soon they stumble with a predator and they run to an isolated cabin, where they meet survivors from another group. Along the hours, they have friction with the nasty Douglas (Amaury Nolasco), while the creature hunts them down. The overrated "Animal" is an awful movie with the usual storyline ("a group of teenage friends go to somewhere and stumble with a threat that kills each of them; but in the end one of them manages to escape, leaving something alive behind for a possible sequel"). If you replace the predator for example by the Bigfoot, you have "Exists". "Animal" has in addition, an unpleasant character performed by Amary "Sucre" Nolasco; the terrible screams of Elizabeth Gillies to bad acting and fake reviews. My vote is two.Title (Brazil): "Animal"

I'll just cut to the chase: The acting was surprisingly good for a horror movie and I did care about what happened to the characters and I could ascribe at least one adjective to each character (leader, brave, selfish, hopeless romantic, etc.) The camera work was excellent. The atmosphere and lighting were good. There was not excessive use of darkness and there was always enough light to let you see what was going on. The special effects were well beyond average for a horror movie. I could tell it was a mixture of CGI and robotic dolls, which I guess must be more expensive than using merely CGI creatures. There was a number of effective jump scares, but I didn't feel the tension and didn't have that sense of emergency I was supposed to have, even when the characters were being followed by the creature, except, of course, for the last fight. The plot was not predictable and I really had no idea who was going to die or survive, which is a plus. All I can say is if you're hungry like an "animal" for a nicely done monster movie, here's your chance.I give it 7/10.

After a weekend getaway goes awry, several groups of friends find themselves trapped in an abandoned house in the woods by a ravenous bloodthirsty creature and must find a way to stave off the creature.On the whole this one was quite the enjoyable creature feature that got a lot to really like about it. One of it's better features is the fact of this one really managing to get a lot out of the simplicity of it's premise where there's a fine sense of action and suspense in here all based on the rather easy-going nature of how it starts off. The fact that the attacks start in before the thirty minute mark is where this one really gets going with the attacks coming in pretty steadily from there on throughout the film as it tends to whip through a slew of exciting ambushes and barricades inside the house to get at them which just makes these all the more fun because of the relentless pace it generates this way. That opening attack on the trail, the main ambush in the cellar and the rather exciting encounter within the kitchen also feature some rather outstanding suspense tactics as well which is another impressive nod for the film by allowing for some creepy attacks and situations to come about as it also includes a fine sense of action as well to really make this one all the more impressive throughout here. Of course, the fact that it features such an impressive creature doing this all makes the scenes even more exciting as the imposing, fanged being strikes a definite impression on-screen and has a personality to match the aggressive action featured which completes the whole look quite well with a great amount of gore thrown in to display the savageness of the creature nicely. Still, about the only flaw to this one is the fact that this one tends to overlook the creature so much in here that it's barely enough to really get a handle on it. There's no backstory about it at all and the fact that the editing hides it's appearance for all but a few brief seconds means that those fleeting glimpses are all we get to discover the creature's appearance which is a little distracting. All in all, though, this one was still quite fun overall.Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.