It's not that it is really bad, it's that it is a cliché from start to end. You've got the group of young people in the woods, all the archetypes in: manly guy, gay guy, black girl, smart person, bitchy person, insane person, etc, their characters barely sketched. And then a nondescript monster, bipedal, bald head, with really long and probably ineffectual teeth, a mane!, nobody bothering to even explain where it came from.
And then it starts, the story I mean. Only there is no story. They all act like it's "just an animal" so their solution is not to trap it and kill it, instead to just go out and try to "run for it". Their only displays of courage is when they have to fight each other.
Bottom line: the same movie, the same lame effects, the same script, the same bad actors. You've seen it before unless you are really young. And then you should watch something better, just because there are so many better genre films.
The only possible reason one would watch this is to see Eve (yeah, the singer) being killed in the beginning of the film.
Animal
2014
Action / Adventure / Drama / Horror / Mystery / Sci-Fi / Thriller
Plot summary
When plans for a weekend vacation hit a dead end, a group of close-knit friends find themselves stranded in unfamiliar territory, pursued by a menacing, blood thirsty predator. Holed up in an isolated cabin, tensions mount as long-buried secrets are revealed. As the body count rises, the group must put their differences aside and fight for survival.
Uploaded by: OTTO
Director
Top cast
Tech specs
720p.BLU 1080p.BLUMovie Reviews
I guess they needed the money
The Usual Storyline Again
Five friends travel to the woods for hiking. They find the entrance closed but they trespass the gate. Soon they stumble with a predator and they run to an isolated cabin, where they meet survivors from another group. Along the hours, they have friction with the nasty Douglas (Amaury Nolasco),while the creature hunts them down.
The overrated "Animal" is an awful movie with the usual storyline ("a group of teenage friends go to somewhere and stumble with a threat that kills each of them; but in the end one of them manages to escape, leaving something alive behind for a possible sequel"). If you replace the predator for example by the Bigfoot, you have "Exists". "Animal" has in addition, an unpleasant character performed by Amary "Sucre" Nolasco; the terrible screams of Elizabeth Gillies to bad acting and fake reviews. My vote is two.
Title (Brazil): "Animal"
A Nice Showing From Chiller
When plans for a weekend vacation hit a dead end, a group of close-knit friends find themselves stranded in unfamiliar territory, pursued by a menacing, blood thirsty predator.
When Chiller debuted, horror fans the world over were ecstatic. And when they started making original films, they became even more excited. Well, at least those who could find the channel. Unfortunately, many cable providers still do not carry it even when SyFy seems to be standard from coast to coast.
With "Animal", Chiller shows it knows what it is doing. Start with a really good creature, constructed from practical components, and throw in a bunch of teenagers or young adults to handle the situation. This formula worked wonders in the 1980s and to some extent still works wonders today. If you add some B-level talent (here we get Eve and Joey Lauren Adams),you add name recognition and save on the cost of hiring Hollywood's flavor of the week.
Yet, reviews have been harsh. Shock Till You Drop stated that the movie was "a waste of a good, old-fashioned creature." We Got This Covered commented that "Animal has enough carnage to appease more forgiving horror fans, but despite a quick pace and brutal kills, it's repetition that truly kills this beast." Let us tackle these two.
STYD has a bit of a point. The creature is very well done, but loses a bit of its luster once it gets too much screen time. This is a tough balance -- you want to show off the goods, but not wear it out. Also, some may find the humanoid shape of the monster a bit disappointing, as it will make it clear that we are dealing with a man in a suit.
WGTC is partially right. The repetition within the film is very minimal, and should not be a problem for most viewers. The bigger, perhaps "meta" repetition is the feeling this has all been done before. This is very much a slasher film with a killer replaced by something that could have been in "Feast". There is, almost literally, nothing new about this plot at all.
And that is where viewers will divide. Some will say that most horror films these days are the same thing and deal with it, enjoying the top-notch creature effects and better-than-average production values. Others might grow bored. If you can watch fifty 1980s slasher films without getting sick of them, this might be for you. But if you think one slasher is all you ever need, and the rest are just copycats, you might be let down.
If nothing else, it was great to see Joey Lauren Adams, who seems to have flown under the radar since the mid-1990s.