Monday, April 27, 2009

The Burrowers

Genre - Horror/Western
Year Released - 2008
Running Time - 124 minutes
Directed by J. T. Petty (who also directed Soft for Digging, which is in my Netflix Queue, and Mimic 3, which I haven't seen)
Written by J. T. Petty (who also wrote both Soft for Digging and Mimic 3)
Cast Includes: 
Karl Geary (Nadja)
Clancy Brown (Highlander, Starship Troopers, The Shawshank Redemption)
William Mapother (Mission Impossible 2 and In the Bedroom - which is, again, in my Netflix Queue)
Doug Hutchison (Tooms from The X-Files - he is also in Punisher: War Zone, The Green Mile, and The Salton Sea)
Sean Patrick Thomas (Cruel Intentions and Halloween 8: Resurrection)

Rating: 2 Skulls

Plot Summary:
The Dakota Territories - 1879 - A handful of brave pioneers maintain isolated settlements in the badlands beyond civilization. Irish immigrant Fergus Coffey is near to winning the hand of his beloved, Maryanne, when she is suddenly taken from him - her family brutally abducted in a nighttime attack on their homestead.

Suspicion falls immediately on hostile Indians.

Experienced Indian fighters Will Parcher and John Clay form a posse and set out to rescue the kidnapped settlers - taking along a naive teenager hoping to prove himself a man, an ex-slave looking for his place, and their ranch hand, Coffey.

But as men vanish into the night and horrific evidence accumulates with the dead and dying, the group discovers that their prey is far more terrifying than anything human, and their prospects are far more terrible than death.

Review:
Horror Westerns - there just aren't enough of them - good ones anyway. . .

When my neighbor brought this one over, all excited about it - I anxiously popped it into my DVD player, only to be sorely disappointed. 

You see, this one was near the top of my Netflix Queue - it had a long wait attached to it, which is generally a good sign. Turns out, I need not have bothered even renting it - this one can definitely wait for television.

As I told my neighbor though - I enjoy horror [obviously] as well as westerns, and I love when the two are combined - I just have yet to find a horror western that absolutely floors me, and I think that I was hoping that this would be the one. Sadly, it isn't. 

Another thing is that I love Tremors [all 4 films] and I was hoping that this one was going to be a more serious "Tremors 4" type of movie - perhaps that is yet another reason that I didn't like this one.

Here's the trailer:


Jason

6 comments:

wiec? said...

aww man. i was hoping this might be a good one.
from the preview it had 3 things going for it:
1) western 2) horror and 3) Clancy Brown.

thanks for jumping on the hand grenade but, what was wrong with it? too many poorly lit night time shots? dumb story? crap ending?

didn't realize they made a Tremors 4.

thebonebreaker said...

I hear you wiec! I thought the exact same thing!

Grrrrr - I was so disappointed that I didn't even tell you what I didn't like about it - D'oh! :-)

My main problem with it was that it was just sooooo slow-paced!

Tremors 4 is set back in the old-west, which is what got me giddy about The Burrowers being a more serious horror flick - not necessarily with "graboid" type creatures, but something similar. Alas, it's just not to be. . .

Definitely check out Tremors 4 if you are a fan!

J

Wings1295 said...

Guess they can't all be great, or what would be the point, right? :)

Guess I won't be adding this one to my queue anytime soon.

thebonebreaker said...

If only, huh Wings? :-)

Yeah, just wait until it hits television.

J

Bobby said...

Great review, but I actually loved this movie. Being a big fan of classic westerns I appreciated the slow burn pace of the film, giving us time to get to know the characters and to understand their dilemma. The dialogue was rich in western colloquialisms and the acting was better than you can find in horror movies these days. I grooved on the gathering sense of dread.

thebonebreaker said...

Bobby,

Thanks for the comment!

For whatever reason, before I ever even saw this film, I had Tremors on the brain, which I think somehow affected my judgment of the film.
[not to mention that it was thrown on me, spur of the moment, by my neighbor, so I may just not have been in the right mindset] :-)

Being that you enjoyed this film, and I have thus far enjoyed all of your recommendations, I will definitely have to give it another shot, one day down the road. . .

J