"Splinter" Review - Written by TonyD

“Splinter”
2008
***½ out of ****
Director: Toby Wilkins
Cast: Shea Whigham, Paulo Costanzo, Jill Wagner


This weekend’s horror flick was “The Haunting of Molly Hartley,” which, from what I’ve heard by the critics on Rotten Tomatoes, are calling it one of the worst films of the year. For some reason, I’m not surprised at all. But here is what is more surprising. This same weekend, another horror film came out starring Shea Whigham and the guy from the “Friends” spinoff “Joey.” “Splinter” was only released in four theaters over this weekend, and it is probably one of the best horror films of the year. It’s not as good as “Quarantine” and “The Signal,” but it is definitely right up there with “Midnight Meat Train.”

Couple Seth and Polly (Paulo Costanzo and Jill Wagner) are going on a camping trap where everything really isn’t going so well, while ex-convict Dennis (Shea Whigham) and his crystal meth-addicted girlfriend Lacey (Rachel Kerbs) aren’t having a good day either. While Seth and Polly are in their SUV, Dennis carjacks them, and forces Polly to drive as far as the car can get them too. They end up running over something with spines, which flattens one of the tires.

It turns out that once you touch one of these spines, you start deforming and make bones in your body go all different ways, and then you die. This brings them to this deserted gas-station, where apparently these “spines” have attacked the gas station worker. They also attack Lacey and kill her, and Seth, Polly, and Dennis are now stuck in a gas station fighting for their lives. Will they be able to break out without having any damage done to any of them?

“Splinter” is directed by Toby Wilkins, who isn’t as much of a director as he is a visual effects supervisor for a few films over the past few years. He also has put together a few main title and end title sequences in a few flicks. Surprisingly, Wilkins didn’t work on the special effects in “Splinter,” which I thought looked really good with the film. There is a scene that is an obvious homage to “Evil Dead 2” that I thought looked great, but I can’t really give him the credit there. Nonetheless, his directing is “Splinter” is pretty damn fine. Too bad he just has to ruin it later next year when he releases a direct-to-DVD sequel of “The Grudge.”

The film isn’t original by any means, but it definitely brings a lot of thrills to the table. The film is eighty-two minutes long including credits, and the eighty-two minutes go by in a breeze. The second half is filled with so much action that you would think that it couldn’t get any better. If I had any problem with the film, it would be that the first half spent a little bit too much time working on developing the characters instead of getting them to their destination for the rest of the film, but it still works out pretty well in the end.

The acting is decent also. Paulo Costanzo from that show “Joey” that I was talking about earlier does a good job with his role, showing some actual acting talent. (I’m surprised too.) Shea Whigham does an awesome job as being the despicable villain, but come the end of the film, we actually start liking him once we begin to feel why he did what he had to do to the couple. Rachel Kerbs is given time during the first half to show a lot of great acting chops, and she does it pretty damn well. I just wish we had a little bit more time with her character.

But the acting weight on this film is all held by Jill Wagner, who put on some of the best acting that I’ve seen all year. Normally, a character like hers would be weak and stupid, but she brings some great emotionality into the film and gives a hell of a strong performance. And being that her biggest role was in that “Blade” TV show that got cancelled after like a half season, it is pretty damn good to see her rebound from it. Her character is also stronger than the character played by Costanzo, which I’m not surprised about the least bit.

Most people probably never heard about “Splinter” until this weekend, but I’m sure that once it comes out on DVD, they will all find a great horror flick. It almost disgusts me that horror films like this are always shown in limited release while films like “The Haunting of Molly Hartley” is shown in over two-thousand theaters, but that’s just the way it is sometimes.