Who payed the critics

Boring, over-political, tech fuzed mess

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

As is the case with most second-season "Masters of Horror" episodes, 'The Damned Thing' is simply a downgrade in all departments: a poorly structured, generally ineffective tale suffering from a muddled plot, one-dimensional characters, and effects that come off as absurd in their own exaggeration (the ep opens with an overblown disembowelment and only gets sillier from there). The actors are done no favors by Richard Christian Matheson's script (a loose adaptation of an obscure story by Ambrose Bierce), which stitches together disparate moments of somber exposition and hyperactive bloodletting in a story that never really comes together: in 1981, Kevin Reddle witnessed his father go on a rampage, murdering his mother in cold blood on his birthday; 24 years later (and now a lawman played by Sean Patrick Flanery), a vague, possessive evil rises up to transform the residents of his sleepy Texas town into bloodthirsty maniacs. While Matheson seems to be making a social comment on man's reliance on fossil fuel turning civil society to pandemonium (echoes of Katrina and the Iraq quagmire), his method couldn't be less subtle. Also problematic is Flanery's portrayal of Reddle--mumble-mouthed and listless, his performance borders on sleepwalking, and a cliché-ridden voice-over does nothing to help us sympathize with him (especially when he unconvincingly heads into Jack Nicholson territory in the last reel). With so much working against 'The Damned Thing' my middle-ground rating comes from Hooper's direction: while 'Dance of the Dead' (his season one entry) combined the horrific and sleazy with pathos and social insight, the director weaved it into a dazzling barrage of nightmarish imagery through his spastic technique; similarly, 'The Damned Thing' shows him operating well within his limited resources--even if the other elements aren't up to snuff, Hooper knows when to shake the camera, and when to keep it perfectly still. But that alone really isn't enough to warrant repeat viewings.

Damned Thing, The (2006) *** (out of 4) The second season of Masters of Horror kicks off with Tobe Hooper's entry. I haven't viewed all of season one yet but so far Hooper's film has been the worst so I didn't have high hopes with this one. As a child, a Sheriff (Sean Patrick Flanery) witnessed his father turn crazy and kill his mother but he also saw the entire town go crazy with suicide and murder. Twenty-four years later he begins to feel the town is once again going crazy with strange murders and more suicides. I was pleasantly shocked to see how much I enjoyed this film. I enjoyed it so much that I don't have any problem in saying this is Hooper's best work since The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The film has some nice suspense and Hooper keeps the mystery going very well. There's some extremely graphic violence that actually works quite nice but the ending is just downright stupid and pulls the film down some.

I enjoyed this MOH episode (although it was not the season opener in Oz). I believe the whole oil / Texas / Iraq / madness embodied by a demon connection could have made a good horror feature - not for the obvious reasons but for what made this episode so watchable. That is, the people who are responsible and those who subsequently benefit are held accountable - fair or not. Good to see Tobe Hooper plugging away as I always like his work (Dance of the Dead on MOH season one was excellent). Hooper appears to be much more an actor's director than a "horror guy". See his fantastic Salem's Lot miniseries and you will get the picture. Cheers!

Sean Patrick Flanery plays the sheriff in a small town. As a child he saw his father kill his mother and then be killed by a thing (never shown). He grows up in total fear of that thing coming back for him. It destroys his marriage...and then it seems it's come back for him...That may sound sort of vague but you should see the movie! Good acting by everybody (especially Flanery) can not save this confusing, pointless tale. At the end a slew of impressive special effects are shoved in the audiences face...but it doesn't make any sense about what exactly is going on. Director Tobe Hooper has done worse but he's certainly done better. The only part that got to me is when we see a man attacking himself with a hammer! Confusing and dull.