from Film Forum, 09/22/05Rather than go into detail on this week's two disposable horror films, Film Forum will just link you to plenty of reasons why you should steer clear.
Suffice it to say that Cry Wolf is about foolish young people at a boarding school playing dangerous games on campus after hours, and discovering that someone's actually murdering the players. Venom is about foolish young people stuck in a swamp full of monstrous snakes released by a voodoo priestess. You won't be hearing about these films at Oscar time.
Regarding Cry Wolf, Marcus Yoars (Plugged In) says, "Every time we're forced to endure a bad movie, we reviewers wait for that perfectly pathetic line that can encapsulate just how lame said film is. Sometimes it's a gimme—a line that makes the whole theater simultaneously groan out loud. Other times it's buried in a minor conversation between characters and, once found, is like a buried treasure waiting to be dusted off and exposed to the world. For the pitifully scripted, painfully acted, C-grade teen thriller Cry Wolf, there isn't one. There aren't two. There are scores."
Lori Souder (Christian Spotlight) sums it up as "deplorable."
As for Venom, Tom Neven (Plugged In) says it's "a well-named movie. The filmmakers present a toxic gumbo of blood, gore, voodoo and vulgarity as foul as the waters of the deepest, darkest bayou. This is supposed to be a super-scary slasher flick. But it's not. It's merely revolting. And lazy."
David DiCerto (Catholic News Service) writes, "High on body count and clichés and low on suspense, director Jim Gillespie's bayou blunder is little else than a series of shock-value slayings strung together by a silly supernatural plot."
Bret Willis (Christian Spotlight) calls it "a bad stereotype of its own genre."
