A contemporary horror movie from Charles Band's Full Moon Entertainment, this is an extremely low-key and boring affair. The sorry excuse for a plot is stretched out to ninety-minute length and just doesn't hold up, in fact hardly anything happens in this film. The only merciful thing is that it feels like a lot less than ninety minutes. To make matters worse, the scriptwriter decided to steal a clever idea from NIGHT OF THE DEMON, where victims find a piece of parchment with runes on their person and are effectively marked for death.The acting is awful; yet again we have a bunch of pretty faces with not one single spark of acting talent between them. One pretty girl strips down to her bra in the final scenes as a desperate marketing ploy (this image made it on to the front cover of the video box, unsurprisingly!), another well-toned guy walks around half-naked for most of the time stressing the fact that he isn't homosexual (?!). There is no real drama, no comic relief, just the inevitable (off-screen) murders to take our minds off the banality of the story. A couple of bloody scratches across somebody's face is about as good as the gore gets.Let's face it, a film which begins with a voice over about demonology, which is laughable, is sure to be bad. The monster itself is quite nicely designed (looking like a mutant with two heads merged into one), but the execution is poor, with the creature obviously being a man in a rubber monster suit. The best bits of the film are shots of the creature creeping about in the shadows, but we've seen this all before - and better, too. Being a post-SCREAM film, there's the opportunity to throw in some self-referential jokes, which makes things all the more irritating.Not to mention the total anti-climax of the ending, where the baddies are killed in the easiest way possible, there's a short build up of suspense, and then...NOTHING HAPPENS! Sure, sometimes low budgets mean that there is a greater creativity to a film, but not in this case. It's just poor, generic trash. There are worse films around (but not many, it has to be said), but this had the potential to be something interesting which makes the final product look even worse.

Typically, I am not a fan of Director David Decoteau. However, under one of his many alias names, he does a good job with this film. Editing by JR Bookwalter probably helped alot, too. All the movies that have come out of Full Moon since their departure from Paramount have been made on extremely low, low budgets..and the product is normally crap! This is especially true since 2000....However, this film is different...Okay, corny dialouge, bad acting, or overacting tend to be very evident in this film...But it still tells a story...To much surprise, the guy that played the homophobic jock, was actually one of the best characters, and actors in the whole film. Though killed off, he was able to maintain a presence in the film, and delivered his lines well, and with professionalism. The Psycho-Lesbian militant woman was just suck! I hated her character!The Special effect are very amateurish, but compared to most Full Moon pictures being cranked out now...this is a 10 in that department. Something to check out...Would have liked to seen a sequel to this one...8 out of 10

While this wasn't a bad film from the straight-to-cable genre, did anybody notice the plot device concerning marking someone for death by passing the runes to that person? If anyone has ever seen Night of the Demon, this should have been obvious. Again, not bad, but do yourself a favor and watch the far-superior Night of the Demon.

Full Moon finally did it. Yes, they quit making those horror-comedies("Curse of the Puppet Master", "Hideous", and "Creeps") and finally attempted a serious horror picture. The film basically is set around a bunch of cheap college students who don't want to pay rent like the rest of us. They get this idea of residing in an old hospital that contains the evil spirit of the Shrieker. Victoria Sloan is once again taking the reins of director for Full Moon Studios and actually makes a worthy picture for once. She seems to understand the restrictions of her actor's talents and the lackluster special effects and works around them. However, I shouldn't be so rough, the acting is actually pretty good in terms of recent Full Moon actors. Tanya Dempsey, who plays the lead, is pretty convincing as the brave new tenant who solves the riddle of who is behind the Shrieker. A highlight of the film is one guy who is so self conscious of his sexuality that he spends the whole film stating he is not a homosexual(pretty interesting). I recommend giving this movie a try, especially if you are a fan of Full Moon films. I really feel it is one of their best movies in recent years.