It Waits Year: 2004 Director: Steven R. Monroe Written by: Richard Christian Matheson, Thomas Szollosi, Stephen J. Connell Threat: Demon Weapon of Choice: Dynamite Based upon: none Color/B&W/3D: Colour Language: English Country of Origin: USA IMDb page:

Other movies in this series:
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Rish's Reviews
As tyranist may tell you when he sits down to review it, I quite wanted to see this film, and he quite didn't want to. So I rented it and brought it over to his haunted, one-bathroomed house. At the same time, Tyranist had rented The Covenant (why I couldn't begin to explain), and somehow I convinced him to watch this with me instead (even though this same week I had decided not to watch any more Horror until we were caught up on reviews).
While I'm sure Covenant is worse, this was not exactly a crowning achievement in cinema.
The story goes: an ancient demon is unleashed from an ancient Native American cave. It slaughters everyone it finds. Apparently, it feeds off of negative energy, and Raisinettes. Cerina Vincent is in the woods, all by herself, drinking away her guilty conscience. So, what is she, a forest ranger? Hell, I don't know (it was twelve hours ago that I saw it and I already don't even care). But she and the demon cross paths, and only one can make it out of the forest alive.
But rest assured, whichever one it is, the parrot will survive no matter what.
A week ago, I was at a friend's house and we were watching TV. During an episode of "Firefly," or maybe "Heroes," my friend laughed when I said, "Pretty," at an interesting sunset or nature shot. "You know that you always do that?" "Do what?" I asked, honestly unaware I had said anything. "You see something and you go, 'Pretty,' like you're a little girl. You sound like my four year old."
So it surprised me when, involuntarily, I said, "Pretty" two or three times during It Waits. The scenery was really lovely. Tyranist constantly pointed out that Canadian forests look nothing like Arizona, but they sure were green and colourful. The film as a whole looked very nice. Too bad the editor decided to eff it up.
The MTV-editing, with hand-held camera that seemed to be operated by an epileptic child on a sugar rush, irritated the hell out of me (more so than usual, even).
The Indian expositional character annoyed me, especially since I he was just there to deliver backstory (and useless backstory at that), and then be killed off-screen. It's possible that the chatty/cutsie parrot might have worked (either in another movie or on paper), but it sure didn't here. The monster, while heavily H.R. Geiger inspired, wasn't too bad-looking. And it was only computer-generatied two or three times.
The highpoint of the film to me was when the creature sets up its victims' bodies as practical joke setups. Well, I liked it (and actually loved one moment where he had propped two bodies up at the kitchen table, sticking the severed head of another one on a plate between them with an apple in its mouth), and laughed, though it was certainly not meant to be funny.
The flick just wasn't scary. And the movie just didn't work. I think part of the problem was that the characters just were not likeable. The lead, Ms. Vincent, who I had gotten so excited about (quite literally, I assure you) in Cabin Fever, did nothing for me in this one. She didn't turn in a terrible performance or anything, but I just didn't like her or care.
Oh, and there was no nudity. After the film, I said, "Wait a minute, why hire her, why not hire some other actress, if she's not going to get naked?" I still can't explain it.
In the end, I was sorry I had made tyranist watch It Waits (though not sorry we hadn't watched The Covenant instead), and I don't suggest that you watch it. Go on, Jesse, just leave me here on the battlefield, go back to Durham and marry Mary Beth . . . just let her know I died like a man, thinkin' of her sweet face in her sweet bonnet . . . and that I smiled before I died.
One more thing: I noticed that Stephen J. Cannal had done a rewrite of the film, and I wonder, honestly, if he made it better or worse. Was the original script a fairly good one, and he messed it up with a lot of drinking and pathos and lines like, "I used to be a Marine, remember?" Or was the script a trite, run-of-the-mill monster-in-the-woods-kills-campers flick, and he added depth to it and the few good things about the film? There was a commentary on the DVD and I suppose I could have tried to find out, but I didn't want to watch it that much--er I didn't want to find out that badly.
Best Scare: At one point, up in the mountains, they go into some kind of dam maintenance building, and when they open the door . . . a cat jumps out, squealing! I had never seen that in a movie before, so it really startled me.
Posted: March 29, 2007

The tyranist's thoughts
This one really didn't look good to me. In fact, I passed up a chance to get a free copy of it because I just couldn't bring myself to care whether we ever reviewed it. Rish was looking out for you good folks though.
The entire premise of this one is a rehash, but they go to even greater lengths than usual to make it be just our heroine against the evil thing in the woods. She's buxom and decently attractive, but it becomes easy to forget all of that when her character does so many stupid things in such a short time. If we are really employing this kind of person in our forest service then we get what we deserve and I weep for the future of our wilderness space.
Of course, if the Arizona wilderness looked even a little tiny bit like this, I'd be ecstatic. It was a beautiful place. There were a lot of stunning shots that made the horror happening seem that much more out of place and petty.
And my last complaint was simply that the mythology of the movie was all kinds of messed up. They seemed to literally make up the rules as they went just so that they could extend the movie a bit longer and hopefully make it to the next scare. Of course, they treated the supporting cast no better, bringing them in as needed and then slaughtering them so that the heroine could plausibly (almost) live for the next scare.
This was a bad movie. Not close the worst I've seen and I can't say I was disappointed, because it pretty much met my expectations. But maybe I can save you from the pain.
Posted: March 29, 2007

Total Skulls: 32

Sequel
Sequel setup
Rips off earlier film
Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie
Future celebrity appears
Former celebrity appears
Bad title
Bad premise
Bad acting
Bad dialogue
Bad execution
MTV Editing
OTS
Girl unnecessarily gets naked
Wanton sex
Death associated with sex
Unfulfilled promise of nudity
Characters forget about threat
Secluded location
Power is cut
Phone lines are cut
Someone investigates a strange noise
Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door
Camera is the killer
Victims cower in front of a window/door
Victim locks self in with killer
Victim running from killer inexplicably falls
Toilet stall scene
Shower/bath scene
Car stalls or won't start
Cat jumps out
Fake scare
Laughable scare
Stupid discovery of corpse
Dream sequence
Hallucination/Vision
No one believes only witness
Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth
Warning goes unheeded
Music detracts from scene
Death in first five minutes
x years before/later
Flashback sequence
Dark and stormy night
Killer doesn't stay dead
Killer wears a mask
Killer is in closet
Killer is in car with victim
Villain is more sympathetic than heroes
Unscary villain/monster
Beheading
Blood fountain
Blood spatters - camera, wall, etc.
Poor death effect
Excessive gore
No one dies at all
Virgin survives
Geek/Nerd survives
Little kid lamely survives
Dog/Pet miraculously survives
Unresolved subplots
"It was all a dream" ending
Unbelievably happy ending
Unbelievably crappy ending
What the hell?