Blood Lake (2014)

Good movie but grossly overrated

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

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

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

This movie is listed as a horror movie here on IMDb. Seriously? There is nothing scary about this movie unless you are a child perhaps. WHen that is said, I will say that "Blood Lake: Attack of the Killer Lampreys" is actually enjoyable enough for what it turned out to be."Blood Lake: Attack of the Killer Lampreys" is a predictable movie and it follows a very mainstream and often used recipe for making a creature feature. However it does have some very unlikely killer creatures; lampreys.The storyline is so predictable that even a blind man could see what's coming next. But still, it is just one of those guilty pleasures. You know, a movie so generic that it is actually still fun.The lampreys were nicely enough animated most of the time, but a couple of lampreys being able to kill a full-grown adult in mere seconds? Nah, I don't buy into that at all.The two names to lure in the audience are of course Shannen Doherty and Christopher Lloyd, and they were not even the leading stars. The most memorable scene in "Blood Lake: Attack of the Killer Lampreys" was the death scene of the mayor, which just happens to be played by Christopher Lloyd, or perhaps even the scene with the screaming lampreys in the burn scene.Well, you know what you are essentially in for when sitting down to watch a movie like this, and "Blood Lake: Attack of the Killer Lampreys" doesn't fail to deliver. It is by every possible manner a mediocre killer creature feature.

BLOOD LAKE: ATTACK OF THE KILLER LAMPREYS is the latest monster movie from those schlock purveyors at The Asylum. It's as cheesy as it sounds, but somehow also quite nifty for an Asylum film and certainly nowhere near as bad as I'd feared. It comes across as a rip-off of PIRANHA 3D in its depiction of a multitude of underwater menaces and even features Christopher Lloyd to hammer home the similarities.The story is simplistic and barely worth recounting. A local water supply is contaminated by lampreys with a taste for human flesh and various authority figures have to combat the menace. I like the underwater nature of these monster flicks as you get all the scenes of swimming pools and showers being invaded by the creatures as well as the local lake. Plus, the CGI isn't too bad here. It's no better than in a giant monster film but the fact that the creatures are small just makes them look more realistic.Shannen Doherty is the big name here, but she's clearly past it and looking embarrassed by the whole thing. The rest of the cast are as wooden as they come, aside from the hammy Lloyd. It's a predictable, action-focused romp that nevertheless offers plenty of creature action and death and destruction, and it's also a notably gruesome offering with blood everywhere. It doesn't take much for a monster flick to entertain me and BLOOD LAKE just about gets by in this respect.

In this movie, killer eels go through the plumbing, slither up Christopher Lloyd's butt, then pop out his mouth.That's horrifying on oh, so many levels that have nothing to do with this being an effective horror picture, which it is not.That the famously reclusive character actor apparently needed the dough so badly that he'd add this call-in DTV role to his Reverend Jim / Doc Brown / Uncle Fester repertoire is sad enough. That he shakes and gesticulates in every of his few scenes like he's got the delirium tremens makes me worry for his sobriety.But when the scariest thing in your horror movie is Shannen Doherty's face -- most specifically her Botox-frozen lips and cig-poisoned skin pallor -- you're gonna want to use your digital effects to make your lead actress look at least a bit less revolting than your vampire water snakes.You didn't here. Ugh. Not ugh blood-sucking eels. Ugh Shannen Doherty.Nobody dies spectacularly; none of the hot girls take their clothes off; the ending's a letdown. The Asylum, ladies and gentlemen.Netflix "Night of the Creeps" or "Slither" instead for a movie that takes awesomely better advantage of its similarly dumb premise.

Knowing (and dreading…) the The Asylum production studios, it has to be said immediately that "Blood Lake: etc…" is a lot less rubbishy then their usual work. By no means should you expect a great movie, obviously, but at least this isn't as insultingly retarded and preposterous as for example - oh I don't know - "Sharknado" or "Mega Piranha". The main reasons why this film is more or less a success, I presume, are the original choice of animal species (so original even that Animal Planet aired the film) and the fact that it's largely an old-fashioned type of 'creature feature horror flick in terms of plot, characters and structure. Haters could of course quote this last argument to claim that "Blood Lake" is very clichéd and derivative, but I firmly believe that ALL animal attack movies are fundamentally a rip-off of the almighty "Jaws". Although filmed in sunny California, the events supposedly takes place in a little lake town in the state of Michigan. They struggle with a lamprey infestation, and after the aggressive eel-like monsters devoured all the fish in the lakes, they break through the hydraulic turbines and into the city's water reservoir. The simple plot easily allows all the familiar clichés to be present. There's the obnoxious mayor who severely underestimates the dangerous situation and absolutely wants to avoid at all costs that his town gets negatively portrayed in the media, the hero's disobedient teenage daughter who flees from her bedroom and ends up in peril and the chaotic beach attacks. It's all very enjoyable since director James Cullen Bressack assures there is sufficient action and not too much idiocy. The Asylum has the bad habit of over-sizing their monsters, but the lampreys luckily remain their natural modest size. The film stars a few familiar faces, most notably Christopher Lloyd as the outrageous mayor and Shannen Doherty as the concerned family mother. Shannen got a little chubby in the face, but hey, she's a woman over forty now and no longer the rebellious Breda from "Beverly Hills 90210".