I first became aware of Devon Sawa upon viewing the dopey/crappy horror-comedy Idle Hands, that just so happened to co-star Jessica Alba. The reason I mention this is simply because it's amusing to me how each of their career paths went. Whereas Alba became a sex symbol starring in numerous forgettable romantic comedies and those pretty junky Fantastic Four flicks, Sawa has slipped along the opposite path with his only notable effort since being the first Final Destination - and maybe playing the lead character in Eminem's "Stan" video. Which makes his appearance in Creature of Darkness both non-surprising and a little bit sad.

Sawa takes the lead role as Andrew whose recently been haunted by nightmares involving his Air Force pilot uncle being experimented on by some nasty alien creatures. It's become such an issue that he's gathered together a group of friends to spend a weekend in the desert where they'll spend their time booting around the landscape in various all-terrain vehicles, do some drinking and try to hook-up with each other. There's your standard batch of stereotypical characters including a wannabe gangsta type who, in one of numerous stupidity fuelled moments, acts tough sporting a handgun which is soon used to shoot the gas tank on a nearby ATV and blow-up most of their transportation out of the area.

Of course, it turns out his dreams of alien invasion are quite real and they soon find themselves the victims of a nasty fanged creature (shown to us early using adequate practical effects before going to shit as CGI in the finale) who has the ability to not only make holes in the Earth appear so numerous people can drive right into them but enjoys using an early victim's spine as a weapon and is able to disguise itself as a human being. We're also treated to senseless scenes of them trespassing on a USAF bombing range (and discovering a mangled body in the process), two of the girls lusting over Andrew and plentiful use by writer-director Mark Stouffer of shimmering green POV shots.

Stouffer also tries to bring some form of cohesiveness to his muddled narrative by tossing in some campfire blather from Andrew about how our alien creature is called "The Catcher" and, in a plot point stolen directly from Predator, has come to Earth to collect specimens. This leads to a finale as uninspired and, quite frankly, boring as everything that's come before it.

To call Creature of Darkness a mess of a creature feature would be an understatement. In the hands of Stouffer the film just screams "amateurish" which is quite bewildering considering he has a past history of winning Emmy awards for his work with National Geographic. I suppose the transition from documentarian to filmmaker just doesn't tip in his favour. But even worse than his work behind the camera is his script which is poorly conceived, piles on vapid dialogue, has a confused flow to events and makes minimal attempts to familiarize the audience with the characters.

In the lead role, Sawa is just going through the motions and is probably only here because, in another piece of wacky trivia attached to this flick, he portrayed Stouffer in the 1997 biopic Wild America. The remainder of the cast is given very little to work with and give apathetic turns at best. Only Sanoe Lake (Blue Crush) has any real personality here.

From top-to-bottom what's on display here is one painful ride. Perhaps the Powerball Lottery winner that funded the production (Hey look! Even more trivia that's more appealing than the movie!) had too much input and dragged things into the gutter but I'm fully prepared to put the blame on Stouffer, his awful rip-off of a script and some suspect CG effects work. This reminded me of one of the numerous hard-to-watch SyFy Channel efforts so take that as a stern warning. (Chris Hartley, 4/13/10)

Directed By: Mark Stouffer.
Written By: Mark Stouffer.

Starring: Devon Sawa, Sanoe Lake, Matthew Lawrence, Siena Goines.

Picture Ratio: 1.85:1 Widescreen.

Picture Quality: The transfer here does look a bit soft overall and some of the darker scenes felt dim but overall it looks fine and is clean of any noticeable debris.

Extras: The review copy we received only contained a trailer but the retail version will also have a behind-the-scenes featurette to check out.

Visit MTI Video for more info.