Splinter.

"Exactly what a B-movie should be, Toby Wilkins's resourceful Splinter uses its limited means to its advantage, the film so focused on keeping terror at a fever pitch that it has scant time for needless exposition or elaborate narrative complications," writes Nick Schager in Slant.

"Buoyed by solid ensemble work, some yuckily effective special effects, and a script that subverts genre convention by having its characters do smart things instead of stupid ones (mostly), Splinter earns our respect while delivering 82 minutes of lean, mean fun," writes Chuck Wilson in the Voice.

"The situation is fairly basic and doesn't have the psychological or sociological nuance that distinguishes similar scenarios in George Romero's Living Dead movies," writes AO Scott in the New York Times. "But even though the characters conform to every expected stereotype, the acting is reasonably convincing. And the monsters travel light, unburdened by allegorical baggage. What are they supposed to be? I don't know. Just really gross and scary, I think."

"Must it mean anything?" asks Joshua Rothkopf in Time Out New York. "Not especially, but it would help.... If the minimart hadn't been so well pressurized by last year's The Mist, this indie would seem a touch more creative. Instead, it's a pesky hangnail, easily removed with tweezers."

"[I]ts creature design and visual effects are both convincing and sparingly employed, and the mostly single-location setting is admirably resourceful," writes Scott Tobias at the AV Club But the film lacks that spark of originality or humor or thematic resonance that might have elevated it from forgettable genre time-passer to something more lasting."

Posted by dwhudson at October 31, 2008 10:08 AM