I didn't even realize this until I started putting this review together, but this is my second Dean Koontz film adaptation that I have watched this year. It seems like his books (or in this case a novella) never get the quality treatment that King's novels do when it comes to moving them over to motion picture. My VHS of Black River has been sitting on my shelf for to long now and I finally fed it into my VCR recently to slop down some notes-and boy was this something else. Two of the main things that drag this flick down are the pacing and the acting. The overall acting in Black River is just horrendous. Normally I can look past it to absorb more of the quality of the film, but this time it just left a bad taste in my mouth. Like I needed some Listerine after eating something with a lot of onions and garlic. The pacing felt very up and down most of the time coupled with the fact that the plot just left me feeling like it wasn't really going to go anywhere. And it kind of didn't. The whole thing with the mayor's brother's ghost calling him on the phone to tell him who is supposed to be with who and who needs to stay in the town and weird shit like that just didn't seem to really fit with what the hell was going on with the rest of the film. There's also some guy that built a remote controlled SUV that follows Bo Aikens around the entire town seemed just bizarre and creepy. To put the rotten cherry on top of this shit sundae is the ending. It's exactly what happened to Bo when he first arrived at Black River, except it happens to some other jackass that's just passing through. How creative.
Traffic just sucks.
I hate saying it, but some humans just take up everyone else's space.
Ok-I didn't think this was a pet cemetery. My bad.
Every hole needs to be six feet deep.
There are way to many cameras in this town. Especially since it was back in 2001.
The mayor is selling Black River just a little to hard.
Security guards always act like cartoons.
Nothing like being screwed in a new town.
How the hell does a hose stand up and turn on on it's own?
Every bar should be equipped with a jukebox that fries it's patrons if they act like jackasses.
Man, there are just to many damn cameras in this town.
Zits and zombies, I don't think this actually warrants a second viewing. It might benefit from it to try to figure out what actually is going on in Black River, but it's not even worth it unless you somehow become attached to this film. Even as a Dean Koontz fan, I'd rather watch any of the King films over this any day. Nothing really positive comes from sitting through this picture unless you find Lisa Edelstein to be attractive, are prone to watching the sub-par work of Jay Mohr in any context or are in the mood to see some assclown get sprayed with a hose that turns on by itself, and then minutes later get electrocuted by a digital jukebox. In which case that scene actually made me laugh because I wasn't expecting it and seeing that guy lying on a pool table covered in electrical burns just made it even better. Go watch Dead Zone, The Shining or Silver Bullet-the Black River is one you shouldn't have to swim through.
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