LOCKJAW

(A.k.a. LOCKJAW: RISE OF THE KULEV SERPENT; CARNIVOROUS; DMX CARNIVOROUS)

Crumbs, even the opening titles to this one make it look like one of those feature-length episodes of "Goosebumps" that would occasionally appear on Nickelodeon (guilty pleasures borne of parenthood, admittedly).

From there, we meet young Allen (Brendan Aguillard) who sneaks out of his home one night after hearing his folks row yet again. He calls for friend Becky (Abby Rao) and persuades her to go for a midnight stroll with him.

The stroll turns into trespassing into their black neighbour Nick's parent's home, where they steal a mysterious box with a quill-like pen inside. Becky gets the creeps afterwards and rushes home, leaving Allen to return to his own bedroom with the booty and begin drawing a picture with the pen: a picture of his abusive dad getting eaten by a giant snake. This somehow causes his drunken father to get bitten by a snake hiding beneath his car on the driveway.

Then we fast-forward a couple of decades and meet grown-up Allen (Louis Hertham) and Becky (Lisa Arnold), who are now married. They seem happy enough, despite this particular day being the anniversary of Allen's mother's death. With smiles on their faces, the pair have plans to honour the occasion by planting some flowers for her in their garden.

While doing so, Becky discovers the mysterious box buried in the soil. She opens it and finds the voodoo pen within.

This coincides with five teenagers - two vacuous couples and one nerd called Kelly (Wes Brown) who bafflingly goes along for the ride despite being the butt of their jokes - who travel into town for a weekend of fun. They're drinking and driving, and the driver in particular is so busy speeding while spying on his partner's arse that he runs Becky over. He assumes he's run over an animal and keeps going.

But Allen witnessed the whole thing and knows better. What's more, as he picks Becky's lifeless corpse up off the road he notices the pen and box that she'd unearthed minutes earlier. He knows only too well how their mystical voodoo powers can work against those their owner takes umbrage against.

As the quintet of painfully dumb teens (we're talking Troma dumb) reach their destination and continue to party, Allen takes the pen and begins to draw a creature once more...

Before long, the first victim has been claimed. But of course the others are too fixated on drinking, fucking and acting badly to notice.

At least Allen realises that his actions have started something dodgy, and he eventually enlists the help of grown-up Nick (rapper DMX). But he has issues of his own...

Taking its cues from JUMANJI, PUMPKINHEAD, ANACONDA, LAKE PLACID and a million other films, LOCKJAW is colourful and slick in a TV-film way and boasts CGI as wrong as the 'acting'. It's tough to elaborate any further - this is a really bad film (even Allen's illustrations are unintentionally funny).

And yet, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It entertained me and made me chuckle. I doubt it will again, at least not any time soon. So, yeah, it is terrible - but if you stumble across it on late-night TV, it's worth a gamble (especially as it's mercifully short at only 77 minutes in length).

It's hard to believe that Steven Spielberg's JAWS was released 35 years ago. It's even harder to believe that it stands to this day as the best of all these 'nature runs amuck' films. What's virtually impossible to accept is that, in 2010, anyone making such a film would rip off the John Williams score made famous in JAWS. But these fuckers do! "Original music by Mary Alice Corton"? Fuck off!

Atrocious. But at least director Amir Valinia keeps cutting back to scenes of a girl with a really nice bottom, cavorting needlessly in skimpy pink panties.

LOCKJAW comes uncut in a generally strong transfer. Colours hold up very well and the day scenes offer nice contrast, along with sharp visuals. Night scenes fare a little softer for some reason, but blacks remain solid.

Amazingly, English audio is presented not only in 2.0 but also in a pretty healthy-sounding 5.1 mix.

A barely animated main menu page (static save for flashes of superimposed lightning) boasts the video nasty-style cover artwork, and leads into a static scene-selection menu allowing access to the main feature via 12 chapters.

There are no extras relating to LOCKJAW. Perhaps a commentary track from the director would've been a fridge too far...

The disc opens with a short trailer for MEGA SHARK VS GIANT OCTOPUS (I haven't seen this but it looks fabulous).

LOCKJAW is a terrible, terrible film. I have to give it minor credit for finding a novel twist to the "nature runs amuck" genre (the voodoo instigation) but, really, it's just daft beyond belief.

Entertaining, but not enough to pay for.

Review by Stu Willis