Flickering Opinions: Nightbreed

Film Details:

Directed and written by Clive Barker (Hellraiser)

Starring
Craig Sheffer (Turbulence 3, Hellraiser: Inferno, Fire in the Sky)
Anne Bobby (Happiness, Finding North, Cop Rock)
David Cronenberg (yes, the director)

Review: by Melissa (e-mail your faithful reviewer)

While watching Nightbreed, I kept thinking, "I could be doing something much more entertaining with my time... like picking at my toenails, or cleaning up rancid dog vomit."

Nightbreed achieves rare levels of suckishness. It's the sort of movie where even if you did have the power to improve one or two sucky things about the movie, enough other things suck bad enough that it would still be a sucky movie.

For example.

The script. It sucks. It has been a long time since I've seen a film that so utterly lacked in character motivation. So, yes, apparently there's this psycho guy running around killing people, because he thinks these people should die. Why? We just don't know. Add ferociously bland dialogue to this. Mix in a poorly handled story concept. Sprinkle in extraneous characters and plot elements. Stir. Dress with moderately interesting makeup designs.

Then there's the acting, which sucks, too. Sheffer and Bobby are as interesting as a dead dust mite. And whose idea was it to cast David Cronenberg? Last time I checked, he was a rather brilliant director. He's not a brilliant actor.

So, if you had David Cronenberg wandering around on a movie set, wouldn't you want him to direct instead of act? If you had Clive Barker sitting around, wouldn't you want him writing a novel instead of directing a movie? Why was Clive Barker directing? It's hard to describe just how badly this movie is directed. Action is often incomprehensible, and scenes begin and end without any sense of transition. I've seen no-budget straight-to-cable 2-AM-on-Showtime movies with a better sense of storytelling.

In short, the directing sucked.

And the editing would have been better handled by a 7-year-old boy with ADD, a box of Pixie Sticks, a can of Jolt Cola, and a weak bladder. At least the movie would have moved faster.

The less said about what's left, the better.

In fact, the one and only redeeming quality possessed by this movie is the score, which is vintage Danny Elfman. In fact, the score is often the only thing holding the narrative together.

It's a bad movie. It's not bad bad, which would be bad enough to be fun, or even bad bad bad, which would make the film an excellent endurance test for drunken friends. Nightbreed is just plain, boring bad. Believe me, your time would be better spent watching mold grow on a block of cheese. As Fleming proved, at least mold has a purpose.