It Waits DVD: Review By Mushy

As a huge fan of Stephen J. Cannell's other TV work like The A-Team and The Rockford Files, I was quite happy to see him return with It Waits. While the premise isn't the most original, Cannell's work as a writer is as distinctive as ever on this film even if he did have a little help.

This is the story of a creature who has been unwittingly released on the world and a girl (Cerina Vincent) who is stalked by this beast. After suffering the loss of her friend in an auto accident, a loss that Danielle St. Clair (Vincent) blames herself for, she decides to take refuge in a wilderness ranger station. As you can guess, she just happens to be within close proximity of this monster and eventually realizes that she is going to have to face it down.

Blood on the Pines

A by the numbers "making of" that takes us into the production of this movie. The actors discuss their characters and we also get to hear about what the creative folks behind the film were trying to achieve. While I happen to find horror movie "making of" pieces to be a bit more interesting than normal, I sort of wish they would have changed things up for this featurette.

Commentary

This track features Steven R. Monroe and star Cerina Vincent. While this was somewhat more serious than I thought it would be (it is a horror movie for crying out loud), I found this commentary to be interesting because of how the participants talked about their work. I got the sense that they took their roles seriously, while at the same time they knew they should enjoy this process.

Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV screens. Horror films work because we are usually familiar with the locations therefore we can see ourselves in this situation. This movie has a dark look to it but for the most part I felt the story was presented in a pretty straight forward manner. As such, the horror worked more for me because I was able to focus on the situation and location and not be taken out of it by petty camera tricks.

Dolby Digital. The audio on this movie was pretty standard. Overall there wasn't really anything about It Waits that jumped out at me. I felt with the visual aspects of this movie being presented in an unenc*mbered way, the audio was a great component to me visualize in my mind what wasn't put forth on screen.

I love this front cover. It's almost all black with what looks like a screaming skeleton splayed across it. It reminds me of some of those horror movies from the 1980s that I used to see in the video store when I was younger. The back cover features some shots from the film, a description of It Waits, a "Special Features" listing and some technical specs. This cover alone should be enough for horror aficionados to give this film a second look.

It Waits isn't exactly what I'd hoped for from Stephen J. Cannell, but at the time same I feel that he's capable enough to work in any genre. It isn't the 1980s anymore so we can't expect him to keep churning out action stories where things explode and nobody dies. Also, this film is very much aided by Steven Monroe's directing. A lot of this film is put across in a cerebral way and because of that much of the scares are left to the viewers imagination.

It may not be the kind of horror film that flies off the shelves like Hostel, but I think It Waits is worth watching.