Tuesday

There's something uncannily wrong with last night's Horror-Fest movie Frankenfish,* and that thing is the toward the middle. When the movie begins it is very natural. Filmed on sunlit locations in an easy-going handheld way, the film has a charming realism. This part of the movie asks these questions: can there be characters in a horror film worth caring about? Can they be professional and intelligent even with deeply southern accents? Can they embody rich three-dimensionality with a few strokes of the brush? The answers are yes. Sam is a medical examiner in some Louisiana parish, called off of one grizzly murder to work another. His new assignment takes him, along with a federal fisheries agent, deep into the bayou. Soon we begin to meet the usual rogues gallery of horror fodder: a naked, pot-soaked hippy couple, a grimly-scarred 'Nam vet, and a potion-brewing voodoo woman with a cataract. These characters are as thin as paper targets, but are still, save one, presented with humanity and respect. I kept wanting to flip back to the cover and make sure this thing was really called Frankenfish. Then the weird midpoint happens, and after that the movie seeks the answers to new questions. Is it possible to insert snarling computer-animated fish seamlessly into live-action? Will the cliché "scared uptight corporate white guy" make it through alive? Should a villainous "most dangerous game" thug appear late in the forth act to explain everything? The second half of this movie should have been answered with a no. Or maybe the first half should have. A swamp, wader-deep with giant northern snakeheads! This is precisely the movie I initially wanted to watch, except after that first half was such an unexpectedly A movie, when the B-side flipped up it seemed a letdown, somehow. [Cavin]