Label: Cinedigm Entertainment
Region Code: 1
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 100 Minutes
Audio: English Dolby Digital 5.1
Video: Anamorphic Widescreen (2.35:1)
Director: James Ojala
Cast: Stephen Tobolowsky, Tiffany Shepis, Carlos Alazraqui, John Hennigan, Lisa Sheridan
When a former teen pop-star Kim Sweet (Lisa Sheridan, TVS Invasion) returns the small Minnesota town she grew up in with her 11-year old son Brody (Jonah Beres) to care for her terminally ill dad Chuck (Bruce Bohne, Dawn of the Dead) she finds that the people there hold a grudge, especially against bratty pop stars they once supported who turned around and talked a lot of trash in the press about the Podunk town she came from. While she struggles to reconnect with her father she also struggles with having to uproot her young son, and getting the stink-eye from the local yokels.
Wandering her dad's rural property Kim begins noticing a lot of creepy, deformed frogs have been popping up in the area, which she brings to the attention of the local high school biology teacher Trent (Faust Checho, 6 Degrees of Hell), and the pair begin to think that the local pesticide company in the area might have something to do with it. Kim goes all Erin Erin Brockovich and brings her findings to the local mayor, played by Stephen Tobolowsky (Groundhogs Day) who like all movie-mayors who find themselves in an eco-horror film turns a blind eye to the bad stuff.
Before long we see more deformities, expanding beyond frogs to dog and wolves, and then we have a kid being born with fish-lips! The ignorant locals start to turn on a family of deformed locals who they believe are spreading their illness through the water, but it turns out to that parasites in the water supply are the culprit. This indie flick wasn't quite the horror film I thought it would be based on the artwork, but it was a decent watch. There's some family melodrama that should have been more affecting than it is but the cast does good work with the material, I was surprised to see Tobolowsky pop-up here, and if you're a fan of scream queen Tiffany Shepis (The Black Room) who also appears just be aware it takes a bit longer to say her name that it does for her very brief scene to end!
As low-budget horror goes the special effects are good, the film is directed by Jim Ojala who started out on doing special effects for Troma's Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV, eventually working his way up to larger blockbusters like Hellboy II: The Golden Army and Pacific Rim, so he's got some skills in that department, a good mix of practical and digital. Where I found that the movie struggled for me was maintaining any kind of suspense and atmosphere, both of which were lacking.
Strange Nature offers up some decent eco-horror thrills but not as much creature mayhem as I was hoping for, so maybe that's more my expectation than a fault of the film. What we do get some decent special effects including some gross skin-peeling stuff, but it lacks in tension and suspense, so it doesn't all come together in a way that's wholly satisfying, but a decent one and done for me. 3/5
www.strangenaturemovie.com
