Swamp Devil (2008)

Wonderful character development!

Well Deserved Praise

SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

A lot of fun.

Arriving in a small town, a woman attempting to help clear her father's name who's accused of murder finds the real culprit is a lot more monstrous than she figured and tries to stop it's revenge-fueled rampage.This was an overall decent creature feature. One of its better features here is the rather fine action scenes here which are quite enjoyable for how frequent they appear in this as the rapid pace becomes very important to these scenes. The opening attack in the forest is highly enjoyable, as the foot chase through the area provides some nice action before the creature emerges for a fine shock kill and eventual discovery, the shots of the posse stalking after the creature in the woods, a series of early attacks with the different parts of the creature come into play with all the vines and tree roots attacking cars and pulling victims along to their deaths in quite graphic fashion all come off rather nicely as these set-up the longer, more involved scenes rather well. The woodland encounter that shows off the creatures' true identity is a big reason for that as it's a truly enjoyable a scene with the triple stand-off, the transformation sequence is stellar as it leads into the frantic firefight and tense stalking of the creature around the forest which is quite fun and a later attack on their cabin features tons of action with the vines crashing through the dilapidated house and chasing them through the house with a flurry of gunshots before leading them away for another great encounter through the woods makes for a great highlight. The finale is another good one, presented as a high- speed chase to put the rather unique weakness into effect for a lengthy action scene as it tries it's tactics to stop them which is quite fun, and all of these action scenes are what move the film along. Given the unique design for the creature as it's a walking tree with plenty of roots and branches sticking out all over so it literally looks like a walking tree and the pretty graphics kills from the high body-count, these are what hold off the few flaws here. The film's biggest factor here is the main plot-point of getting the girl to come out, which makes no sense. There's little reason to believe that having her come out because her father is charged with murdering a local as that doesn't seem all that likely to occur in real-life. That this also leads to plenty of time driving around the town meeting up with the locals who are none too interesting spilling further information about the back- story, or she's interacting at the cabin doing even more investigations which aren't all that enjoyable or make the story any clearer. The last flaw here is the ever-present and continually below-average CGI for the creature. It never looks good, rarely interacts normally within the scene and looks really stilted and quite fake. However, this is to be expected and isn't as big a deal as is normal. These here are what hold this one down.Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Language.

Don't let the varying covers of this movie trick you into thinking that there is some interesting viewing ahead, as I can assure you there is nothing remotely interesting about this mess.Movie starts with some kind of prologue that occurred 17 years ago. A young girl running from something in the swamp, runs into a man who turns out to be a deranged killer. The then local sheriff and some men track him down and instead of bringing him to justice they beat him within an inch of his life and then throw him in the bog.Flash forward to "today", and there is another young girl, albeit sightly older & more developed, running through the swamp who then gets dragged to her death and is found floating up in the marshes. The townspeople all suspect the former sheriff, who's now an old man so they set about bringing him to justice.Enter the old man's estranged daughter; lured back to the town under the false pretence that he was dying. Once back into town the story of him being a suspected murderer is revealed and she's there in the hope to help catch him.Long story short, the man who tricked the daughter to come back to town turns out to be the creature responsible and after a few ridiculous deaths and seemingly endless chases through the same part of swampland, father and daughter reconcile, creature killed and everybody lives happily ever after. The reason all this happened is that the swamp devil has been hunting down all those who "wronged" him and making their deaths look like accidents or suicides, plus by his own admission he just loves killing.The worst thing about this is not the cheap CGI, the boring deaths, the highly derivative story or the poor acting, what really got under my skin is that the identity of the killer/creature is actually given away within the first 5 minutes and then repeatedly throughout the movie. For some stupid reason the killer thrown into the bog 17 years ago simply didn't die, he instead bonded with the bog itself and became the swamp devil. Sure why not. That wouldn't be so bad except that he can somehow change from being human to vine creature at will, yet he leaves inexplicable muddy footprints wherever he seems to go and no one takes any notice. In addition he seems to be bound by the city limits, never being able to cross the county boundary line. Let's not forget the constant attempts at shooting at this thing which never works, (it is largely a plant after all) but they keep trying and of course failing and you wonder why they don't try fire, it is as I said largely a plant. So how did they manage to kill this thing? They drive to the edge of town with the creature on the back of a pick-up truck where it jumps off just before they cross the line. It then stood around like an idiot knowing that certain death was a mere 2 feet away until the old man in a car ploughed into it and threw it across the county line where it exploded in an shower of dirt, roots and vines. And like all cheap and nasty monster movies, going all the way back to the 50's, there is some kind of epilogue where the woman who owns the diner goes into the swamp and then lovingly caresses a skeletal hand shaped vine coming up out of the bog indicating that the "horror is due for a return". All I can say is, I certainly hope not!

Bad, and not even close to good bad. Bruce Dern, a good actor, is unfortunately trapped in this nonsense of a film. It's as if the entire story was made up by a ten year old. The CGI stick man monster is cartoon-like. All of the actors, including Dern, look embarrassed being involved with such drivel. Worst of all the reason for the stick monster's existence, and his demise, seem to have been given minimal thought, and the result is beyond ridiculous. This is one to be avoided at all costs. To put things in perspective, I would say that "Swamp Devil" is even worse that "Manticore", another preposterous Sci Fi Channel dud. ..... MERK

A young woman (Cindy Sampson) finds out some disturbing supernatural truths about her father (Bruce Dern), who has been a suspect to multiple murder cases.This film really had nothing going for it. The story was rather boring, and the effects on the "swamp devil" were not very good. I understand it is low budget, but if you cannot make a decent looking creature, please do not have him running around in plain sight for us to make fun of him.And, sadly, the twist was predictable early on, with the second twist being just as predictable. Whoever wrote this either did not understand how to be subtle, or the director just did not understand how to craft a story.