Overrated and overhyped

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Shrieker is set in the small American town of Westbrook where university student Clark (Tanya Dempsey) is looking for some really cheap digs, fellow university student Zak (Jamie Gannon) tells Clark of Greenhaven Hospital which has been abandoned & empty for 50 odd years & that he & four other students are squatting there. Zak invites Clark to join them which since the rent is free is too good an offer to turn down, also living there is David (Parry Shen), Mike (Chris Boyd), Tanya (Alison Cuffe) & Elaine (Jenya Lano). Things get spooky straight away, the first night Clark hears a chilling shrieking noise & also finds ancient symbols written on the floor which happen to summon an ancient demon known as a shrieker which needs five sacrificial offerings for the one who summoned it to be able to control it & the squatting students are as good a sacrifices as anyone else...Directed by David DeCoteau under the pseudonym of Victoria Sloan (now we know why there's so many gay jokes here) this is yet another cheap Full Moon Pictures production from Charles Band, to be fair to it Shrieker isn't as bad as one might expect but it's definitely not something one would call good. While watching Shrieker it's hard to not notice the glaring similarities between it & Jacques Tourneur's classic Night of the Demon (1957) with it's plot about someone raising a demon from hell & having to pass people slips of paper with ancient incantations on them so the demon will kill them & the only way to stop it is to give the piece of paper to another willing person, co-incidence? I doubt it. The script by Benjamin Carr takes itself very seriously & is far too slow, apart from a brief opening sequence when the Shrieker is seen it doesn't make an appearance again until the 40 odd minute mark. So basically in that 40 odd minutes we learn that this assorted bunch of students are squatting in a disused hospital & one of them is messing about summoning up demons from hell & sacrificing their buddies, this really needed more pace & purpose because the story is weak & pretty predictable. The one thing that saves Shrieker from being totally worthless in my opinion is the mystery surrounding just who the traitor is & why they are summoning up a demon, there's a reasonable double twist ending which is OK but the Shrieker creature is far too easily defeated.Director DeCoteau, sorry Sloan does OK, it's reasonably well lit & there's an alright spooky old house type atmosphere. The Shrieker itself is only ever seen in quick cuts, in fact you'll get a better look at the creature on the video cover on the IMDb's main page for Shrieker than in the actual film itself. The special make-up effects on it look pretty good so I don't really know why the makers were so afraid to show it. Forget about any decent gore as there isn't any, there's a few dead bodies covered in blood but nothing else. One thing I wondered while watching Shrieker was that if the hospital had been abandoned for over 50 years why was the electricity still turned on?Technically the film is good, surprisingly shot in full 2:35:1 widescreen it looks nice enough & has reasonable production values considering it's a Full Moon production. The acting is OK but nothing particularly memorable.Shrieker was better than I expected because of one or two decent plot twists but please don't take that as any sort of resounding recommendation because it isn't. Average at best really, it could have been a lot worse but at the same time it could have been a lot better.

SHRIEKER is a Full Moon production. I knew what to expect (very little quality) but I didn't expect this to be as painful as SHRIEKER was to watch.It's just awful. Bad acting, confusing script and direction. Annoying characters I wanted to kill. The whole thing was probably made in one week. I've seen episodes of CHARMED that were more complex and convincing than this cheapie.It has the look and feel of an orphaned episode of a badly conceived TV series no one has ever seen. It was a chore to watch and I could feel my mind getting dimmer and dimmer by the minute. Watching a movie shouldn't be this much hard work.

Sometimes Full Moon makes entertaining movies. This isn't one of them. Full Moon is like a low-key Troma. Their movies aren't as violent or off the wall, but they're usually just as devoid of talent. The acting in this movie isn't terrible but the script is pretty bad, and overall it's pretty boring and it doesn't even contain any nudity (like many Full Moon movies) to somewhat redeem it. Skip this one, and go rent "Head of the Family".

Full Moon finally did it. Yes, they quit making those horror-comedies("Curse of the Puppet Master", "Hideous", and "Creeps") and finally attempted a serious horror picture. The film basically is set around a bunch of cheap college students who don't want to pay rent like the rest of us. They get this idea of residing in an old hospital that contains the evil spirit of the Shrieker. Victoria Sloan is once again taking the reins of director for Full Moon Studios and actually makes a worthy picture for once. She seems to understand the restrictions of her actor's talents and the lackluster special effects and works around them. However, I shouldn't be so rough, the acting is actually pretty good in terms of recent Full Moon actors. Tanya Dempsey, who plays the lead, is pretty convincing as the brave new tenant who solves the riddle of who is behind the Shrieker. A highlight of the film is one guy who is so self conscious of his sexuality that he spends the whole film stating he is not a homosexual(pretty interesting). I recommend giving this movie a try, especially if you are a fan of Full Moon films. I really feel it is one of their best movies in recent years.