Review: Splinter

Directed by Toby Wilkins.
Stars: Shea Whigham, Jill Wagner.
Distributed by Icon Films Australia

Splinter is an independent horror film that owes much to classic, old-school monster films, especially John Carpenter's The Thing. The plot is simple: two couples - a pair of love birds on a camping trip and a couple on the run from the law - are holed up in an abandoned service station while a terrifying organism outside takes over the bodies of its victims in the most violent and creepy manner possible and then seeks out more yummy, warm-blooded people to consume. It is the simplicity of this siege scenario that makes Splinter effective. The film draws its tension from the audience's investment in these four characters and their struggle to survive. Refreshingly, this isn't a film that needed a high body count to be effective. Quite the contrary. The audience stays with the characters for most of the movie, allowing a connection to them that is sadly lost in so many high death toll slasher films of the last two decades.

There are deaths enough to satisfy the gore hounds, to be sure, but the most disturbing aspect of the film is the otherness of the splinter organism itself. Much like the animated body parts in Carpenter's The Thing, various corpses and dismembered appendages terrorise the characters in ways that will make your skin crawl. The splinter organism does not need explanation, although the observant viewer will notice signs along the roadside stating the area is an oil exploration site, which provides some level of plausibility for the imaginative viewer. The organism's ability to infect living people provides the film with its most confronting scene when one of the characters becomes infected. The resulting amputation (via box cutter and cinder block) is guaranteed to make you cringe.

Technically, Splinter does everything right. Most of the action takes place at night and within the fluorescent brightness of the service station, which provides Director Wilkins plenty of claustrophic, tight angle shots while lending an air of isolation. The special effects are superb for an independent film, easily on par with much bigger-budgeted efforts, bringing the corpse-creature amalgam to life in a realistically alien manner. The only false note was the characterisation. The acting from all concerned was top rate, but the characters themselves tended to develop into stereotypes: the fiesty survivor chick, the bad guy with the heart of gold, and the nerd with all the explanations. The audience's investment in their plight and a few deft direction changes toward the end of the film prevented them from sliding into the realm of cardboard cutouts, however.

It is easy to see why Splinter has won six Screamfest Awards and was nominated for the Saturn Award for Best Horror Film. It is a solid film in an era of hit-and-miss horror fare - it gets the basics right and provides just enough over-the-top creepiness to make it memorable. Splinter is probably the best alien body horror film since The Thing and will have you on the edge of your seat, squirming with every twist and turn.

www.splinterfilm.com