The dregs of streaming subscription video these days. It’s getting harder than ever to find a decent movie on streaming services, especially now that Amazon Video and Netflix are focusing more on producing their own content and much less on licensing films. And so I try out films that I normally wouldn’t pick if there were something actually good available. As long as a film doesn’t seem to be offensive and has a chance at being OK, I’ll give it a shot. And so, “Splinter.” A movie about a fugitive and his girlfriend who take a dimwitted PhD student and his girlfriend hostage on the road, and there’s a monster. It’s a low-budget, independent horror movie. And that phrase—LBIHM for short—is enough to condemn any movie immediately. However, other reviews had been kind, saying that this was a neat little thriller. For me, it was little, yes, and it was amusing enough. But the characters were uninteresting and often did things contrary to what most people would do; I mean, there were so many times that the hostages could have whacked the gun-holding person and taken control, among other things. What saved the movie was the monster; you never really get a look at “it,” which is exactly the way you’re supposed to do a monster movie. The barely-seen, spiny, swiveling, squirming humanoid thing is a throwback to John Carpenter’s “The Thing” but adds its own twists, literally and figuratively speaking. It’s a great monster, and the setting at an old gas station in the middle of nowhere is an excellent setup. But the formula for a great monster movie = great monster + great environmental setup + interesting characters, and the movie fails in the third variable. If the characters aren’t interesting enough for you to care about, you have no emotional skin in the game; you’re just waiting for the monster to do its thing.

Kudos to the special effects folks, who make the monster a lot more compelling than most big-budgeted flicks. And the horror sequences were directed well; the movie just could have used some more character revision. I was hoping to be pleasantly surprised and be able to say, Hey, look at this weird, great low-budgeted movie that I found, like “He Never Died” or “13 Sins.” But nope, it’s only another LBIHM; just one that’s more watchable than most of the trash in that genre.

Not For Kids