We don’t know who she is, and to be fair, she does not know who she is as well. From one of her fingers, however, there is a wedding scar and that indicates she is married.
In this case, there is not much going on, but the atmosphere is made really creepy by the clever use of camera angles and sound effects. The woman, actress Jolene Blalock, is not very convincing when she reacts to the sounds. We’re just a few minutes in, and as a horror thriller fanatic, I’m forgiving okay, very forgiving especially to novice writers and directors. And Writer and Director Michael Winnick (DEUCES) is such a newbie, despite his very short experience in Norway in some television movie.
After those terrible sounds and after a blackout loses power, the power kicks back in and the woman finds her door ajar. Her door was part of the auto-lock system that all the cell doors were equipped with, and they opened automatically, letting out all their occupants. But strangely enough, even though the cell doors are open, the prisoners remain captive.
Then SHADOW PUPPETS starts off, taking the classic CUBE setting of a group of people who have no relationship or common reasons behind why they are kept as prisoners. There are many variations of this story and some are utilized quite well. SAW is another that comes to mind. “People stuck in a prison with no knowledge of who or where they are” is not new. One of my earliest memories is from an episode of the old Twilight Zone called Five Characters In Search Of An Exit. If this plot device is earlier than that, I’m unaware of it. Since then, there have been a ton of films and TV shows that implement this meme.
And it’s a meme and not a rip-off, so I do not fault Winnick for it, and there will undoubtedly be many more movies that can work with this concept in the coming years, it’s that good a concept.
As I am watching SHADOW PUPPETS, I already have certain expectations as to where certain plot points could go, where they should go, and the enticing chances that I didn’t consider or always hope for. And within that realm, I want the “impossible.”
As you might have guessed, these people have no idea who they are, and, as they part ways (at least for a good reason), language casts them through their cell, only to come to the sad realization that they are, in fact, sealed inside a hospital. Jolene Blalock’s character is with some guy James Marsters from BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL, and ANGEL, and the film unfolds like a cross between a first person shooter and an adventure game.
Eventually, we meet some of the strange characters such as Dave, played by Richard Whiten from JACK FROST and THE ISLAND. This happens with the gathering of clues to decode the mystery that surrounds the happening within the hospital. It turns out that Dave is far more frightened than monstrous which is what I anticipated. I soon found that monsternation did transpire tend keep in focus in a manner that shifted the whole essence of the movie. I really liked how Whiten executed his character as well. He totally knocked the brief part he played out of the park. The movie sparked into life like a fire started by a match the moment he stepped onto the screen.
At this moment, the remaining two people, a guy (Mark Winnick, DEUCES), who happens to be the director’s (Michael Winnick) brother, and a girl (Diahnna Nicole Baxter), are heading in a different direction. Although the guy has a nerdy persona, he puts on a brave face. The girl, on the other hand, is completely immobilized by her fear of any form of motion. It turns out that she prefers not to be in a the state of solitude. Therefore, she reluctantly resorts to tailing the guy who she is charging her frustration towards. The pair then encounter a new woman, Natasha Alam, who appears to be dealing with everything perfectly fine, which is a bit scary. On the other end, lets be honest, when a young guy first spots her, she is nude and happily setting the bar quite high. But some unfortunate, obscured moments are also taking place.
Another dull attempt at scare tactics is called the “the hand on the shoulder gag”, which is guaranteed to startle their target without any explanatory context. Directly after the slapstick moment, a breath of realism is blasted into the audience in the form of jaw dropping mockery when the next scene looks utterly preposterous.
Now James Cameron when he made the sequel to ALIEN, one of the most SF/Horror movies ever, had to deal with one glaring stupid cliche and that was the father jumping out of the closet cat scares scene. I will explain that in detail later, but when Jonesy the cat hisses, she’s actually doing it for a very good reason. However prior to Ripley starting her brand new scifi adventure in ALIENS, she is seen clutching Jonesy. She then says, ‘And you you little shit-head… you are staying here.’ That was Cameron’s way of killing the gag. This is his way of telling the audience that he wasn’t going for the hackneyed. That was his way of saying f*ck you!
In the 1990s, Steven Spielberg personally killed the joke in JURASSIC PARK by removing the ‘Hand on the Shoulder’ gag. He certainly made it his own.
Wes Craven thought outside the box literally, by burying a multitude of Scrams worn out tropes in his film, SCREAM. He assumed that if he called attention to all cliched horror films in his movie, he would automatically be exempted from such cliches, however that certainly didn’t work out in his favor.
Instead, SHADOW PUPPETS starts out fairly well, but soon becomes unfathomably boring due to excessive cliches. What’s shocking is that it doesn’t even rely on cliches since a tension build-up is completely absent. Winnick chooses the most random places to add jokes, and it simply doesn’t work.
What can be concluded from this is that SHADOW PUPPETS is a pretty shallow world, and instead of focusing on the deeper, more intricate world of horror thrillers, it feels like Winnick is more interested in his next movie. Instead of feeling like a horror movie, SHADOW PUPPETS comes off more as an action thriller. Instead of scaring or shocking the viewer, tension is heightened through action-filled chase scenes, shootings, and fight scenes, instead.
This movie has two other problems min my opinion. The first one is the varmint: It is not frightening at all. It performs deadly acts, but so does a murderous thug in a crime drama or the hitman in a spy movie. The monster is a cgi, smoky, shadowy spook which we never ever find frightening and the eyesore is through point of view. The effects are boring and not frightening. Much more consider a point of view that is not terrifying by showing it all off, but rather through revealing snips of it. Parts that would have made it far alluring to our imagination. It is a lot more frightening thinking about how scare FINAL DESTINATION was and refraining from showing any of the monster at all.
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