Tooth & Nail

Tooth and Nail is one of the movies from the After Dark Horrorfest line-up of 2007 which includes Frontier(s) and Borderlands. Tooth and Nail has a simplistic and over-played plot - a group of survivors in a post-apocalyptic world must fend off a group of hungry cannibals. Any movie with this description you know will be a tired, cliche-filled flick, so I did not go into this with high hopes.

I decided to get it because it has Michael Madsen in it, and I loved him in Reservoir Dogs. Remember the ear scene? Also in the cast was Robert Carradine and Vinnie Jones. All of these actors have small roles, so if you want to see the movie for one of these actors, don't get your hopes up. I am a huge fan of Michael Madsen but he had such a small role in this that I nearly wanted to stop watching after his part in the film was finished. All of the main actors in this movie, with the exception of Rider Strong who showed some convincing performances near the end of the movie, are weak actors. There is little character development, most of which is crammed down your throat in the first half hour of the movie using poorly written dialogue. Even poor Michael Madsen and Robert Carradine get terrible lines.

The directing work and camera work were higher than I expected. I have gotten quite used to watching utter trash filmed using a shaky digital camera. This was not that, thankfully. I have not figured out yet why filmmakers think shaking a camera so that nothing can be seen is an effective filming method. But, see my post about Cloverfield for that rant!

Now, for the blood and gore score - the special effects in this movie were not terrible at all. Most low-budget horror films use fake looking blood and bad digital effects. Not this movie. The effects are quite good, even if the body count is few and far between. The last few minutes of the movie are nicely done with respect to the violence, blood, and gore. If nothing else, I felt that the movie redeemed itself because of the last few minutes when the main protagonist gets revenge.

Overall, slow to start out, then it picks up. But the character development is weak and the acting is just a step above. But the blood and gore is decent. 2.5 out of 5 stars. Not terrible, not great. Just okay.