I was expecting a lot from NAILBITER after the first five minutes. After all, in those five minutes I found out it was a well-shot and initially engaging film, one that took the time to develop character and situation unlike so many these days. I was hoping for something better than the usual run-of-the-mill horror guff.
Unfortunately after just a handful of minutes NAILBITER gets significantly worse when the main characters find themselves holed up in a cellar to escape from an approaching tornado. After this point, they're trapped in the cellar FOR THE ENTIRE RUNNING TIME. In the dark. There's a mutant monster on the loose, yes, but he's barely glimpsed and seems incidental to the main storyline, which is just about those women sitting around in the cellar and complaining. Of course, there's time for a ridiculously over the top ending along the way.
The film is very underwhelming for the genre. None of the cast are familiar and none of them give very good performances; none of the protagonists are likable either. Bloodshed is kept to a minimum, and the horror itself is limited to those dumb jump scares that work for very few people these days. In other words, there's virtually no reason to watch this.
Plot summary
This movie is about a mother (Alice Maguire) and her three daughters who are trying to get to the airport to pick up Mr Maguire, the daughter's father. But on the way there is a tornado warning and the trip starts to get too dangerous so they stop on the highway and run to a house to take shelter. Nobody answers the door so they all get in to the cellar to wait out the storm. But then they discover that there is somebody in the house above them, and then they become trapped in the cellar. But there's more to worry about than the impending storm, and their lives become endangered, by something that's not normal.
Uploaded by: OTTO
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This should have been so much better
Surprisingly fun and enjoyable creature feature
Forced to take shelter from an oncoming tornado, a woman and her daughters find the remote house's basement they've chosen is the resting place for their monstrous children and must battle the creatures to get out alive.
This is a decidedly decent enough offering that has some good points about it. The biggest part of this is the fact that the whole set-up here is quite unique and original which really makes this feel quite new amongst the glut of similarly-themed efforts. The oncoming storm and the desire for shelter make for quite a thrilling action-packed opening and the sheer coincidence of choosing the wrong place to hideout is a true staple of the genre of stumbling into something that there's no way of knowing anything about but are now being forced to fend off that new menace so there's a lot of mileage about that in here. The slow discovery of the basement and eventual realization of what they're doing down there is utilized greatly here with absolutely chilling work done on the set-up and lay-out of the basement, the initial attacks that really handle the ongoing lack of what they're dealing with and the fight to survive bringing in a lot of good along the latter half as the different methods of dealing with the creatures as well as the final twist about their chosen refuge giving off a truly chilling realization. That aids in the final action-packed confrontations here which is where all the good fights are thrown where they have to deal with the different creatures seemingly all at this point in the film which gives it a great sense of action at the end but also manages to bring up one of the only real flaws here. The lack of creature action throughout the whole film does it a bit of disservice by making it quite confusing about what's actually down there since the attacks are really only held in the last part of the film and the ones before are all off-screen with the sound-effects used to denote what's going on, yet we never seen anything so it really makes them hidden for no real reason. They look good when seen on-camera and are done in practical effects, but by hiding them it really stretches a lot of the beginning out quite a bit and makes it really hard to buy into the back-story of the creatures. We get next to nothing about them and hardly any attacks to really get a chance to witness their power, while the targets' age really hampers the gore factor in here that could've help in this regard as well, so there's not a lot to go on here with them. Otherwise, this is quite an enjoyable feature.
Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language and violence against minors.
You'll bite your nails out of regret.
What were they thinking... I really don't know. I guess they came up with a fair overall idea, but couldn't find a good way to throw the main characters into it. The main reason is that the majority time of the movie takes place inside the cellar, which is boring and adds nothing to the movie story (which, believe it or not, is about vampire- like monsters).
Also, what's up with the movie title? It's not misleading, mainly because it doesn't lead us to anything. The whole overall idea, which is this "monster town", could be used another way entirely! Actually, I think this whole monster town thing could be a nice concept (though, overused),and could make the movie a lot better if done right; but it was not! Remarks to the acting too: it's terrible. Underacting at its finest!
Overall, mediocre B-movie. Only watch if you're into bad movies for entertainment or curiosity... at your own risk!