The Schist oil company is polluting the Bywater swamp and the locals are up in arms about it – but that is nothing compared to how the guardian of the swamp, Man-Thing, feels. Man-thing will not rest until the drilling platform has gone, and until then he will kill anyone he can get his branches on.

New sheriff in the town, Kyle Williams, and sexy third grade school teacher, Teri, embark on a quest to put an end to the death and destruction.

Brett Leonard's adaptation of the Marvel comic books is an enjoyable and schlocky monster flick that never gets ideas above its station and is savvy enough to give its core audience exactly what they want; we get moderate gore, a smattering of nudity, a pretty decent monster and a plot that doesn't exactly tax the old grey matter.

The swamp locations are a sufficiently creepy setting for the tale. Swimming in mist and bathed in a spooky green glow, they allow Leonard to use shadows and light for maximum effect - at times concealing the horror and at others, revealing it in its full gory glory.

The effects – both the gore and the creature – are also pretty impressive. When Man-Thing gets busy on his victims, he doesn't hold back and we get a range of gruesome body parts splashed across the screen during its 105 minute running time.

In fact, the only thing that really lets this film down is its pacing. The film is too long (by about 20 minutes) and too much time is spent with characters either chatting or wandering aimlessly through the swamp. If there had been a little less talk and a little more action, I'd have rated it higher.

I was not expecting a good movie, especially since I have an in general dislike of the movies airing on the SyFy movies, save a few exceptions. Man Thing has a lot of problems, but it is a decent movie compared to a vast majority of SyFy resume. For one thing, the film does look great with great effects, photography, lighting and scenery, and the monster actually looks it had taken effort and time to construct. The music is good and has a fair amount of atmosphere to it. The pacing was better than I expected, the middle may drag in spots but I have seen duller SyFy features and also ones that feel more rushed. The deaths are suitably gory and I admire it for attempting to stick to its original origins. Against all that, the story is very predictable with any scenes that attempt to be suspenseful falling flat and the script on the most part is derivative and clichéd. Likewise with the characters that also have no life to them. The acting is terrible, not only do the actors play their roles badly looking very uncomfortable but they don't connect to them. In conclusion, decent even with the many problems it has. 6/10 Bethany Cox

MAN-THING is one of the less well-known Marvel adaptations out there and for good reason: it comes across as a cheap, nihilistic, digitised version of Wes Craven's SWAMP THING, as a creature made of mud and tentacles roams around killing unsuspecting redneck folk. The main characters as the usual do-gooding small town bores who you couldn't care less about, while the photography is the pits. The film is schlocky and cheap looking throughout, focusing on explicit deaths for the victims but little in the way of intelligence or originality.