Nailbiter

Sometime there are films that are so bad that they swing back around again to good, simply because they miss the mark of what they are intended for so dramatically. I love films like that, and this just happens to be one of those. This is a real work of cinematic genius, if you like rubber masks, bad acting and poor sets.

Now, the director and producer must have thought they were really clever with this film as the beginning is a scene about 10 minutes before the end, which done in any other way could have been a real star move, sadly this just felt like flimsy time filler, which there is a lot of in this film.

So…black screen with a tornado siren sounding in the background and thunder….suddenly a women screams and lightening illuminates her face (my description is making this sound much more dramatic than it actually was). Cut away to 2 annoying teenagers in a car. Annoying bitch of a girl and desperate geek who really would love to date annoying bitch but clearly isn’t in the same league. They chat mindlessly for a few minutes establishing that he would like to get to at least second base with her and then she gets out the car and leaves.

Shot to mum in an AA meeting, she has decided to give up drinking as her husband is coming home from the war (which War? No one really knows) and she thought that giving up drinking would make things better, personally I think hubby dearest will be a little upset to find that he is coming home to a depressed sober wife, but thems the breaks. Mum returns home and you realise that annoying bitch girl, is one of mums brood, along with quiet bookish girl and not quite all there girl. Despite there being a tornado warning, mum has decided that she wants to drive in to Kansas City and stay in a hotel over night so that they can pick up daddy in the morning.

Ushering the girls in to the car, obviously the tornado sirens start to sound and rain (which apparently only falls on cars) starts, turns to what looks like melted marshmallows for a bit and then turns back to rain. They stop at a local convenience store, which cleverly the owner is boarding the windows with wood that is way smaller than the widows…yes that will stop them breaking, and they run in to the local police force…large dumb cop and possibly evil cop.

Jumping back in the car, the rain starts again and looking in the rear view mirror they see the tornado approaching from quite a fair distance away. Any normal person would have probably stayed in the car and kept driving, but no…not in this film. Running their car in to the grass verge, mum decides that dragging her kids out of the car and banging on a local homes door is the best course of action. Of course no one answers the door, so they break in to the storm cellar, which frankly was locked with a pad lock out of clay. Finding a very nice roomy basement, they get comfy and wait for the tornado to pass, which conveniently is really quickly. When they try to get back out they find that a tree has fallen over the door and they can’t budge it. They decide to see if they can get someone’s attention upstairs with the old cliche of banging a broom handle on the ceiling. Nothing doing there, so they decide to break a small window and send not all there girl through it, as she is climbing through a window which has lovely pieces of jagged glass around the edge of it, which doesn’t appear to bother her in the slightest, something that looks like a green marigold glove passes by and bites her. Dragging her back in to the basement they see a bite with 2…yes 2, layers of teeth. This makes her feel unwell and they look around and find jars of water (moonshine) and a hessian sack, which is probably carrying more diseases than the thing that bite her. Cleaning the wound with the moonshine and bandaging with the hessian they lay her down on a really lovely crochet blanket.

Bitch girl has her mobile phone and 3, yes 3, bars of signal, so she has been attempting to ring and text desperate boy and daddy, who is on a plane so I don’t know how she thought he would be able to help, but obviously something is happening with the signal and nothing is going through. She sends texts to daddy keeping him updated with their so far traumatic ordeal.

Looking around, bookish girl finds some old new papers and journals and finds that all is not well in the state of Kansas and weird kids were born durning storms. Honestly the journal looks like something I made at school when I was about 8, pages dipped in tea for effect and all.

They hear footsteps above and try and get the attention of people in the house, but soon realise that they are being kept their against their will, when people come and board up the windows and remove the tree and nail the door shut.

Mum eventually looks around, and finds a secret door behind some shelves which the director kindly made a big deal out of earlier with some long, lingering shots of it, and they all decide to go looking around the new part of the basement. There is an incredibly long hallway which they walk down very slowly and not that it is about 100 yards long, where they find a still which is where the moon shine is being made.

Cut to the road. Dumb cop is driving along with the rain just falling on his car, and he sees the car on the verge and goes to investigate. Knocking on the door an old dear answers and invites him in. She makes him a cup of coffee and they chat about the storm, he asks her if she has seen anyone and she says No. suddenly possibly evil cop appears, saying he was helping board her windows up, and you work out possibly evil cop and old dear are family. Dumb cop says he needs to get back to road patrol and leaves, being given a tornado cookie to take with him. Before he leave the house, we takes a walk around the outside and hears the women in the basement. He breaks off the boards and is about to help them when he is dragged off by a creature.

Mum tells bookish girl to stay with bitten not all there girl, while she and bitch girl go and get the still as they can use it to blow up the door (Yes I know…I didn’t write it), they go and take another slow walk down that hallway. Back with bookish girl and there is a rustling from a bag of corn, all of a sudden something comes out and eats her face off, but she doesn’t scream.

Mum and bitch girl, precariously carry the still back to the basement they have been residing in and find bookish girl dead. Mum all but gives up.

Upstairs, old dear has let her monster husband out of the house and you can hear growling and mewing to the line, I haven’t seen dad this happy in ages.

Bitch Girl is telling mum she still has two other daughters and she needs to get her act together. Bitch girl finds a nail gun and she arms herself with it. They move the still to the door and just as mum working out how to blow the doors off she gets injured by another rubber thing. Bitch girl kills the rubber monster with a nail to the head. She has a nasty injury to her side. Just then, not all there girl wakes up. Bitch girl explains that mum is injured and bookish girl is dead. This obviously freaks not all there girl out a little bit, but mum tells them to take cover as she throws a Molotov cocktail at the still. Boom the doors are off, but mum is dead from the blast.

Bitch girl and not all there girl run out in to the rain which is now falling everywhere and are met with dad monster. The nail gun runs out of nails, but not all there girl finds dumb cops arm with a gun in the hand and throws it is beautiful slow mo to botch girl, who then in slow mo, catches the gun perfectly and shoots the monster in to the mouth, blood splattering.

The run from the house and knock on a neighbours door. They seem nice, let them in and say they will call for help and get them cleaned up. Not all there girl, goes upstairs to use the loo and hears a baby crying. Walking in to the nursery…as you do in a strangers house, she has a look of horror on her face at the baby, and the neighbours are lay in wait for her in there and eat her.

Bitch girl runs up stairs sees what is happening and shoots those monsters. Walking downstairs, old dear, evil cop and a myriad of others say they just want a chat with her. Running outside she finds the whole neighbourhood are actually storm freak monsters. She goes to shot herself, but decides against it and dashes for a truck. The truck, doesn’t have any keys left in the ignition and she doesn’t know how to hot wire it. Just as the storm is peaking, the monsters break the widows and back to the first scene of the film, the girl screaming in the dark.

The truck then appears to get lifted up in to a tornado and dropped somewhere else. Next morning evil cop finds the truck and the girls bracelet, but no girl. He sniffs the bracelet and declares her dead somewhere. There is a lingering shot of her phone.

At the airport daddy gets off the plane and picks up his luggage and the film ends.

Now I think even though I have missed some small details, I have probably made this film sound much more exciting than it really was. There was a lot of time filling with walking up and down a hall way, and the monsters were like a melted tyre. The acting was like something from a grade school project and the rain effects were like someone playing with a sprinkler. I also need to point out to you, that I paid, yes paid, for the pleasure of watching this abomination of a horror movie, but I would like to think that my 99p went to the cause of making the sequel which was announced just 7 days ago.

If you are looking for a way to kill a Monday night, this definitely is the film for you, you can marvel at the poor effects and disastrous acting, and make up your own theory and whether daddy will go kick some rubber monster butt in the sequel.