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trustno1 wrote: »

Splinter

First full length feature from director Toby Wilkins is like the bas*tard child of The Mist and The Thing. Simple story - a group of people get trapped in a gas station while a splinter parasite which uses people and animals as a host tries to get in to kill them. I really enjoyed this, the effects are good (on I would imagine a modest budget) and I did care about all the characters and enjoyed watching their inventiveness in handling their predicament. With a running time of 82 minutes it is quite a short film, but well worth a look.

Darko wrote: »

Splinter is for all intents and purposes a calling card, a film made to show the talents of an FX artist cum director and as such the FX work is brilliant. The creature design and its usage is highly reminiscent of Evil Dead II and Bride of Re-Animator. There's a subtle charm to the low budget nature of it that's hard not to love and the creature is used sparingly in order to create just the right amount of tension.

cavemeister wrote: »

Splinter (2008)

Splinter is set somewhere in the American countryside where Seth (Road Trip's Paulo Constanzo) and Polly (Jill Wagner) are a young city slicker couple who have decided to go camping for the weekend. After a series of "city folk can't make it in the country" disasters, they decide to check into a motel instead. On their way along the quiet roads to their Motel, they are taken hostage by a hitch hiking couple who are highly agitated and seem to be running from the law.

Upon pulling into a gas station to fill up the car, they find the station attendant covered in what appears to be hundreds of black splinter like thorns all over his body. Initially it is assumed he is dead but when disturbed, he springs to life and tries to attack and kill the group. He seems impervious to gunfire and body parts removed, seem to be able to move on their own. Trapped inside the gas station, our group must fight for survival against what seems to be an invincible entity.

Personally, I liked the idea of the movie and was looking forward to watching it. However, I was left feeling a little hard done by.
Firstly, the "Splinters". We do not know where they came from. Are they alien, are they biologically created or simply nature evolving itself. The only explanation we get throughout the movie is that it is some kind of parasite that controls it's host.
Secondly, it stinks of John Carpenter's "The Thing" but at least with The Thing, we got to see the alien/parasite. In Splinter, every time we see a shot of the infected host, we get the "shaky camera" effects and never really see what is attacking our group of survivors - Obviously, budget issues would have played a part in this as CGI is not used anywhere in the movie (refreshingly)

I researched the movie online and was surprised to see it getting favourable reviews so possibly, they are seeing something in this movie that I don't.

Overall I was disappointed. This movie in the right hands and the right budget could have been a cult classic.

5/10