‘The Deadly Spawn’ had been on my ‘to watch’ list for well over a decade, but finding a copy of it (in the UK at least) has always been a bit of a pain…But! with my subscription to ‘Shudder’ coming to an end, I decided to mop this one up in (less than steller) streamed SD quality.

The plots pretty basic, an alien lifeform crashes to earth on a meteor and hides out in a families basement, picking off members of the family one by one. When the teenage son of the family (a scientist in training) finds one of the infant life forms scuttling about, him and his friends decide to investigate the creature. and in doing so quickly realise the situation is much more serious than they initial thought, and certainly much more DEADLY.

Based on the trailers i’d seen for this movie, I had somewhat high hopes going into it, indeed; the film does really impress with its puppetry of the titular ‘deadly spawn’ and with its gore effects, model work and lighting. But that, for me at least is kind of where the compliments begin and end.

Even clocking in at 81 minutes long, this thing feels bloated. With only a couple of more interesting horror/action sequences happening across the first two acts and nothing particularly astounding taking place till we’re AT LEAST 50 minutes in.

The opening starts of solid enough, but it quickly gets bogged down in long conversations that arnt particularly charismatic and dont particularly add much beyond basic character notes.

the pacing is a bit all over the place which creates an uneven experience. With one noteable scene being shortly after our cast capture an infant version of the creature. theres an elongated chat about what exactly to do with it. These kinds of scenes are commonplace in this kind of movie. But they’re usually reserved to the second act, with the first act establishing the characters and throwing some thrills in to ensure the viewer sticks around. here, that scenes in the middle of the first act and it slows things to a crawl for a good 10 minutes.

The movie DOES manage to pull itself together in time for a rip roaring 3rd act showdown. But its all a little late and im not sure movie go-ers would have stuck through the 60 odd minutes of inaneness to get to this point.

The film also kind of struggles with what kind of tone it wants to set. It cant decide whether its a completely straight cut sci-fi monster movie ala ‘The Thing’ or ‘XTRO’ or whether it’s got a bit more of a comedic edge to it. As such it almost feels kind of lost for a good chunk of the runtime as to exactly what it wants me to feel and how it wants me to react. It kind of ends up putting out nothing strong enough to help define it. The promotional materials for the movie suggest its a campy bloody movie. But it isnt nearly as fun as you’d think.

The direction too is kind of middle of the road. It gets the job done fine enough, but some of the cast seem a little lost on where to stand and how to work with their set space and lines, some of the sequences really lack a punch and it just kind of feels like a film that worked with ‘good enough’ for the non effects driven scenes, overly relying on the effects and puppets to really try and do the heavy lifting for the picture.

the cine is probably the films strongest element. while composition for the most part is fairly by the numbers, it at least has a veil of professionalism about it, and as mentioned the effects shots and puppeteering throughout are fantastically good fun. with some really well shot and lit effects that are over the top, bloody and genuinely impressive given the size and scale of the production. If nothing else the film stands out for some top notch effects work here.

The edits kind of bland, sequences tell the story well enough, but because the general composition work is kind of ‘mid’ it means the edit can only really do so much, and a lack of solid B-roll footage to allow a more fluid edit really does let this thing down at times.

The cast are all pretty competent, there was noone who ACTIVELY underperformed. they all deliver their lines well enough and they do seem to get into the part fine. It did just kind of leave me wishing for more though.

Realistically, I could see this being a pretty solid B-picture to something like ‘Return of the living dead’ something you put on at the end of the night after a few beers with friends. While the effects work is genuinely very impressive for a film of this calibre, the script, cine and direction broadly are kind of lacklustre and while I didnt actively dislike this one. Now that i’ve seen it, i’d probably not choose to watch it again. maybe as a double feature or as part of a marathon…But on its own? No.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-deadly-spawn/