Sick Product of a Sick System

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

This Movie keeps you alert and on edge with an excellent choice of unusual creatures that make sounds a lot like The Predator, but are way more dangerous. It's a horrible way to die, being eaten while paralyzed but fully conscious.I liked the explanation of their having existed since before humans came on the scene, and subsisting on the then millions of Bison, and since we were the primary cause of the reduction in Bison numbers, well then, we're the Main Course for them now. A really good movie. Preferably it should be watched in total darkness for the Creepy Effect.

Reading a chapter in Kim Newman's book Nightmare Movies:Horror on the screen since the 1960s,I noticed a small section of the book focusing on Horror-Westerns.Nearing the end of the section,I spotted a title that Newman mentioned,which sounded like a great genre cross-over of the Western with a monster-movie Horror,which led to me getting ready to track down the Burrows.The plot:The Dakota Territories- August 11th,1879:Returning home, Fergus Coffey discovers that his fiancé Maryanne Stewart has been kidnapped,and that a number of her family members have been brutally murdered.Suspecting that Stewart has been kidnapped by an Indian tribe,Coffey gathers up a gang of fellow outlaws,who soon set off to track down Stewart.Trampling on any Indian tribes near by,Coffey and the gang fail to find any sign of Stewart. Interrogating a number of the tribes people,Coffey begins to hear about a group called The Burrowers.Presuming them to be a new tribe,Coffey and the gang start setting their sights on finding The Burrowers,but soon discover to their horror that they will have to dig deep into the unknown,in order to find the mysterious Burrowers.View on the film:Featuring hardly any indoor scenes,writer/director J.T. Petty soaks in every inch of the outdoor atmosphere,by using vast wide- shots,which along with giving the title a gritty feel,also superbly shows the haunted wilderness that Stewart is tracking The Burrowers in.Along with the epic wide-shots,Petty and cinematographer Phil Parmet show an expert eye in the use of shadows,with the impressive (practical) special effects for The Burrowers being wrapped in velvet darkness,so that they can slowly creep up on the viewer.Keeping the horror nerves shredded with the clever use of shadows,Petty splashes a lavish Western mood across the shaken nerves,by using candle lights and camp side fires to show the deadly terrain that Stewart and the gang are entering.Slowly allowing the haunting horror elements to seep in,Petty sets them against an excellent, rugged Western backdrop,thanks to Petty showing Coffey and the gang desperately try and stick to "the old way" in hunting down Stewart and The Burrowers,with Petty being unafraid to show his heroes in a less-then positive light,as they pull bits & pieces of info on The Burrowers out of the tribes people. Gripping the Western atmosphere with a firm Horror fist,Petty fires off dozens of horror shots,which brilliantly go from being extremely creepy, ( character's being buried alive) to delightfully squishy, (Coffey finding himself surrounded by dozens of Burrowers) as Coffey starts attempting to bury The Burrowers.

Hoping to find his loved ones, a man joins a group of settlers in the Wild West to look for them and stumble upon their abduction at the hands of a vicious race of creatures and must get away before they suffer the same fate.This turned out to be quite enjoyable and entertaining for what it was, a simple creature feature. By being set in the Old-West, it takes the suspense to a rather interesting scenario by utilizing the time-frame constraints in terms of weaponry and knowledge about the titular creatures and really making it about the journey of discovery going on about the creatures and what's going on, which is a lot of fun. The setting is used to fine effect with the time-line war with the Indians that was going on at the time and manages to get a lot of mileage out of that storyline with several big action scenes against the tribes in the area making for a rather cohesive feel about the time and place here being somewhat underused in the genre. This gives it a refreshing taste of originality that comes rather nicely with the impressively utilized creatures, simply by being an original creature in terms of behavior, appearance and general feel in the first place but also settling in with the time-frame issues already mentioned to generate an incredibly chilling and suspense air about it, for the gradual dawning on the men that rogue Indians aren't to blame for the disappearances but rather these strange, fearsome creatures makes this quite suspenseful as all that becomes known about them comes from the interactions between the victims and the survivors and it all feels really fresh and unique. The finale itself is a lot of fun and certainly gets a lot to like about it as well with lots of action and plenty of gore wrapped up in the general dispatching of the creatures, resulting in a fine finish to this. There's some problems, though, as the film is just not all that fun in terms of pace, as this tends to wander around for so much time dealing with the Indian side-plot that it really only leaves the creatures to be present for two or three scenes altogether, really making it tough to get into this as the pace is just so sluggish and weak that there's not a lot of time to dwell on the action to keep things exciting. With the lack of engaging subplots to hang off of, since those as well are sidetracked by the war against the tribe and the inherent stupidity of the cavalry to deal with the issue, this is quite a difficult film to get into and really takes a while to get going. For a final disappointment, the fact that the creatures are difficult, blurry blobs of CGI mess during their scenes really takes the sting out of them a little when it's hard to make out what they are exactly, but all told this is still a fairly fun effort.Rated R: Graphic Language and Graphic Violence.

This is a typical "revisionist" western movie. Which means White people are the bad guys. Just remember, you need to feel guilty.So the plot is that these creatures called "burrowers" are popping out of the ground and having no buffalo to hunt (because evil white people hunted them down) start killing people instead.So the creatures take some people we don't see for more than a few minutes (including children, because dead kids are always funny), a posse of five characters set out in pursuit on the theory that these are Indians.None of the characters are really likable. It's like the producers wanted the audience to suffer by just watching it by doing one unpleasant thing to the characters after another before flipping us all the bird at the end.