Dir: Terence Gross
Star:  Bobby Edner, Randy Quaid, Nastassja Kinski, Harry Groener

This was one in a series of five films which were made for cable television – specifically, Cinemax – around Halloween 2001. The series, called “Creature Features”, was produced by FX guru Stan Winston, and took as its inspiration monster movies made by American International Pictures in the late 1950’s. The others were The She-Creature (1956), Earth vs. the Spider, How to Make a Monster, and Teenage Caveman (all 1958), though rather than straightforward remakes, the new versions all added a more modern spin to the concepts involved, or as here, going in a completely different direction. In this case, the title also picked up a bonus definite article, its predecessor having been called simply, Day the World Ended, and was directed by B-movie master, Roger Corman. This 1955 film told of life after a nuclear apocalypse, with a household cut off from the rest of the world, having to handle other survivors, as well as a monster in the nearby woods. The remake has no such Armageddon, though does at least retain the “monster in the woods.”

Kinski plays school therapist Dr. Jennifer Stillman, who arrives in her new district, which is the small town of Sierra Vista. Almost immediately on arrival, she meets troubled young boy Ben McCann (Edner), who has just been in a fight with another kid. He was an orphan, adopted by the town’s physician, Dr. Michael McCann (Quaid). after his mother vanished, in circumstances best initially described as “murky”. The boy is now obsessed with SF comic books and B-movies [including Day the World Ended], and appears to have telekinetic powers. Ben is also convinced that his father came from outer-space, and will eventually return to rescue him. Just an over-imaginative little boy, right? So Jennifer thinks to begin with, crossing swords with his father over the need for therapy. However, sleepy little Sierra Vista is shaken out of its slumber, by a series of violent – by which, I mean, face-ripping – deaths, which leave the local sheriff (Groener) baffled. Dr. McCann, not so much, because he realizes that the victims have something in common – involvement in the disappearance of Ben’s mother.

Initially, this seems closer to another 50’s slice of SF, Invasion of the Body Snatchers [made the year after the original World], with Stillman encountering reluctance and resentment from the locals, who appear to resent her big-city ways. At one point, she says “How Tippi Hedren of me,” after being blamed for the strange things which follow her arrival, an apparent reference to Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. It drifts thereafter,  and for a bit the audience is left wondering whether the alien angle is entirely in Ben’s head, a result of his mind being corrupted by age-inappropriate entertainment. Then, the audience remembers that this series is called “Creature Features” and was produced by the guy who made the Predator – so you know the odds are slim of this being a subtle, underplayed piece of psychology, when there can be some rampaging latex-suited guy in the woods instead. And so it proves, with the second half turning into just about that, more or less. Although at the end, it heads off into “Monsters from the id” territory, and concludes without offering any true resolution at all.

Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing either: this is, after all, a made for cable remake of a movie whose budget, Wikipedia tells me, was $96,234.49. There’s something to be said for this kind of remake – applied to something with room for improvement, or whose core concepts spark an idea worthy of further exploration. Not sure this necessarily falls into either category. While the special effects are not bad, they have hardly taken advantage of the greater freedom offered by the cable destination, with regard to content: outside of a couple of F-bombs, this could just as easily have been something made for the SyFy channel. It’s not helped by an extended flashback sequence, revealing what actually happened to Ben’s mother, that appears to have been shot entirely with the strobe effect on the camera accidentally enabled. I’ve not clue what Gross was trying to achieve here; what I can say, though, is that whatever it was, doesn’t work.

Kinski’s portrayal is okay: I was reminded somewhat of her role in A Storm in Summer, both in its portrayal of someone who cares about a child, despite being unrelated to him, and the lack of any romantic angles for her character. However, Dr Stillman is a thoroughly unconvincing “child therapist,” not least because we don’t ever see her doing any therapy – she’s supposedly responsible for an entire school district, but as depicted here, her focus is absolutely on a single kid in a single educational establishment. It might have worked better if she had already been in place, with Dr. McCann and Ben moving to town, perhaps trying to escape the strange trail of carnage which seems to follow them, wherever they go.

It’s likely significant that you find yourself thinking of ways this could have been better, even as you are watching it. To be honest, the title also no longer makes any sense, with the apocalypse theme of the original entirely missing, and promises far more “doom” than the movie ever delivers. Quaid isn’t bad – his role reminded me somewhat of his similar one as a father harboring a dark secret, in Parents – and I was also diverted by trying to remember, from where I was familiar with Groener [the answer being his role as Mayor Wilkins from Buffy the Vampire Slayer]. Edner, meanwhile, went on to a musical career and was also a dancer in Alien Ant Farm’s Smooth Criminal video. Now you know. I guess, overall, this falls mostly into the category of harmless. I can see where it was trying to go, yet there’s hardly anything that will stick in your mind, and a relatively well-known cast (compared to some of the other Creature Features, in particular) appear to be content with not much more than showing up.