Film Review: Final Spawn (aka Dying God) (2008)

SYNOPSIS:

His city rocked by a series of vicious murder/rapes, corrupt, alcoholic cop Sean Fallon (James Horan) recruits ruthless local pimp Chance (Lance Henrikson) to help hunt down the person responsible for the deplorable crimes. But the closer they get, the more they both begin to suspect that the killer may not even be human.

REVIEW:

Ok, there is a lesson to be learned here……its not uncommon for a dvd title to come out under 2 names at the same time. As I note posting a review just a week ago under th name of Dying God, I find myself reviewing a film with a different title that I now find is the same movie though sporting different cover art and name…..hmm, clever marketing I guess, but sometimes it can be a bit fustrating as well.

“Final Spawn” – a not too clever title sporting a cool creature on the front. ooh, it has Lance Henriksen in it..it must be good! Well not always, but it does have a fair amount of alien creature weird ness. Ok, back up a second, no alien though it’s one of those creatures we’d learn about in an X-files episode I suppose. This story has 1 obvious self serving bad cop Sean Fallon (James Horan) trying to track down the killer of a string of mysterious murders. They are all rape victims that have ended in death. As he tries his best at being a hard nosed cop who seems to have a passion for hookers and sleazy women he hooks up temporarily with actor Erin Brown… though let’s be real and just call her by her known name of Misty Mundae. Ya, there are plenty scenes of him doing coke, sleeping with women and a fair amount of back alley shenanigans that pretty much takes up most of the story. But it’s the creature at the end of the film that we are leading up to. Now we’ve seen “Alien”, we’ve seen “Species”, and we seen “Sleet stacks”…though this thing is an obvious suit wearing hybrid. The lighting of the film actually accents him more than the directors probably wanted him to be seen which sometimes reveals the obvious mask slit in back. Though the film is about make believe and we go with it in the way it’s served.

As a result of hooker slayings this beast has pissed off the local crime lords who think they stand a chance. We get a nice shot of his alien junk and a few shots of heads being smashed or shot off with a shotgun but they still fall a bit on the …”it looks independent route”. rightly so.

Lance is pretty decent as he is in most of his films, though his set environment and production is a bit less than probably he would of liked to be associated with. On one hand there is some silliness here in the presentation, in other there is a legitimate attempt to produce a monster driven film.

I will say though I was happy to see that they didnt over-expose the creature and let him evolve up till the ending. If the lighting or color treatment was a bit more moody it might have workd pretty good. Though as mentioned we get to see too much production mojo and not enough treatment.

Misty Mundae is actually pretty decent, in a sense. Somehow even in her angry moments she comes across cute and desirable. It’s just something in the mix I suppose. This feature probably won’t make full pricing but it may be ok for a lower priced movie of the week moment. I know a fair amount of horror fans who will roll their eyes and complain, the rest of us might be ok with a SYFY-like movie production. You could pretty much chalk this up to a tv series episode and find a home for its look and feel. The violence and gore at times might be a little more racy than prime time but thats a bonus in this case.