Inadvands Boring, over-political, tech fuzed mess

Brendon Jones It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Sammy-Jo Cervantes There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Ezmae Chang This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Leofwine_draca SWAMP DEVIL is a B-movie that commits the cardinal sin of being boring. This clichéd, unoriginal film follows a well-ploughed route and barely justifies the running time with a threadbare plot that bears little resemblance to reality. Once again there's a rarely seen monster out in the woods that kills a handful of people in campy death scenes, until the main characters finally team up to tackle it. Aside from a few cool moments of not-bad monster action at the climax, this is boring stuff indeed.It doesn't help that the CGI effects used to animate the vine-man are pretty diabolical; they reminded me of something you might see in a superhero flick and the analogy is made clear when a central character reveals his ability to transform into said creature. This blows away any vestiges of credibility and it doesn't help that the guy playing the monster is an absolutely terrible actor. With the opening scene of a scantily-clad blonde being pursued through the woods at night by an unseen predator, I thought this might be mildly entertaining, but I was mistaken. A lame twist ending and barely any bloodshed to speak of work against this one as well. I did like the idea of the monster not being able to leave the town boundaries but I'm sure that's been ripped off from a previous movie as well.Sci-Fi Original movies seem to be a hit and miss affair, usually miss though. The only one I can say I've really enjoyed has been AZTEC REX, but stuff like IN THE SPIDER'S WEB and VIPERS are bottom of the barrel, just like this film – but I think SWAMP DEVIL is even worse than those two movies. The old-timer in the cast is Bruce Dern, who you have to feel sorry for, although lead actress Cindy Sampson manages to portray an inner integrity which makes her more than appealing. Otherwise SWAMP DEVIL is barely worth your time.

metalrage666 Don't let the varying covers of this movie trick you into thinking that there is some interesting viewing ahead, as I can assure you there is nothing remotely interesting about this mess.Movie starts with some kind of prologue that occurred 17 years ago. A young girl running from something in the swamp, runs into a man who turns out to be a deranged killer. The then local sheriff and some men track him down and instead of bringing him to justice they beat him within an inch of his life and then throw him in the bog.Flash forward to "today", and there is another young girl, albeit sightly older & more developed, running through the swamp who then gets dragged to her death and is found floating up in the marshes. The townspeople all suspect the former sheriff, who's now an old man so they set about bringing him to justice.Enter the old man's estranged daughter; lured back to the town under the false pretence that he was dying. Once back into town the story of him being a suspected murderer is revealed and she's there in the hope to help catch him.Long story short, the man who tricked the daughter to come back to town turns out to be the creature responsible and after a few ridiculous deaths and seemingly endless chases through the same part of swampland, father and daughter reconcile, creature killed and everybody lives happily ever after. The reason all this happened is that the swamp devil has been hunting down all those who "wronged" him and making their deaths look like accidents or suicides, plus by his own admission he just loves killing.The worst thing about this is not the cheap CGI, the boring deaths, the highly derivative story or the poor acting, what really got under my skin is that the identity of the killer/creature is actually given away within the first 5 minutes and then repeatedly throughout the movie. For some stupid reason the killer thrown into the bog 17 years ago simply didn't die, he instead bonded with the bog itself and became the swamp devil. Sure why not. That wouldn't be so bad except that he can somehow change from being human to vine creature at will, yet he leaves inexplicable muddy footprints wherever he seems to go and no one takes any notice. In addition he seems to be bound by the city limits, never being able to cross the county boundary line. Let's not forget the constant attempts at shooting at this thing which never works, (it is largely a plant after all) but they keep trying and of course failing and you wonder why they don't try fire, it is as I said largely a plant. So how did they manage to kill this thing? They drive to the edge of town with the creature on the back of a pick-up truck where it jumps off just before they cross the line. It then stood around like an idiot knowing that certain death was a mere 2 feet away until the old man in a car ploughed into it and threw it across the county line where it exploded in an shower of dirt, roots and vines. And like all cheap and nasty monster movies, going all the way back to the 50's, there is some kind of epilogue where the woman who owns the diner goes into the swamp and then lovingly caresses a skeletal hand shaped vine coming up out of the bog indicating that the "horror is due for a return". All I can say is, I certainly hope not!

Wizard-8 I've previously seen several other movies from this production company (RHI), and those movies were pretty bad. "Swamp Devil" is not much better than usual for this company. For a low budget movie, it is lit and shot fairly well. Some of the special effects are also not bad for a low budget. And Bruce Dern does add a little life, but not even his talents can save the movie. Monster fans will be disappointed that there is almost no blood and no gore at all, and there's nothing in the nudity and sex department. But what sinks the movie is the script, which has a number of unanswered questions. Why can't the monster cross the county line? How was the person exactly transformed into a swamp devil? Why did the monster wait so long to get revenge against the Bruce Dern character? What is the exact relationship the swamp monster has with the diner owner? And how is what happens in the final scene possible? Clearly this was an unfinished screenplay, and should have been worked on A LOT more before shooting began.

Paul Andrews Swamp Devil starts as city girl Melanie Blaine (Cindy Sampson) gets a phone call from a guy named Jimmy Fuller (Nicolas Wright) who claims to have known her when they were young children in Melanie's home town of Gibbington, Jimmy pleads with Melanie to come back to Gibbington to see her father Howard (Bruce Dern) who is dying. Although Melanie hasn't been in Gibbington for twenty odd years she feels she should make the effort to be with her father so she drives up there where she discovers that her father Howard isn't dying at all & in fact he is wanted for the brutal murder of a teenage girl. The local Sheriff (James Kidnie) & a posse of local men are on the hunt for Howard who is hiding out somewhere in the vast local swamps & marshes, Melanie decides to stick around to find her father but there's more going on that at first appears. Was all the crazy talk of monsters living in the woods by Howard just trying to shift the blame from himself or is there more to it than that?This Canadian production was the third & to date final Sci-Fi Channel 'Creature Feature' directed by David Winning after he had previously directed the equally awful Something Beneath (2007) & Black Swarm (2007), unfortunately it's not so much a case of third time lucky as third time even worse than the first two. I suppose in broad terms one could say Swamp Devil is a cross between Swamp Thing (1982) with it's similar sounding title & similar looking monster made from swamp weed or branches or whatever it is & A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) with the central concept of a brutal child murderer being killed by vigilantes (including the local Sheriff) & coming back for revenge although one also has to say that Swamp Devil is as bad a cheap 'Creature Feature' as you can imagine. I have seen so many of these things I am beginning to wonder why I bother watching them as they are all generally awful from rubbish scripts that are very predictable & make no sense (there's absolutely no explanation whatsoever as to why or how the killer was resurrected as a Swamp Thing rip-off, there's no reason given as to why it can't cross the county boundary & there's no reason why it hasn't already killed Howard (I mean he's been running from this thing for twenty odd years? Why didn't he just move house?)) to clichéd cardboard cutout character's (a typical local Sheriff, one character who know's about the monster but no-one else believes them) to forgettable dialogue to yet more truly awful CGI computer effects work that render any of the scenes with the monster laughable. The pace is slow, the film is boring & apart from some dull mystery elements that are easy to work out Swamp Devil really doesn't have much, if anything, going for it.The one thing that might have saved Swamp Devil was some good solid exploitation but unfortunately this is pretty much PG rated stuff all the way with only one scene featuring any blood when someone has possessed vines poked through his leg & shoulder very briefly, otherwise Swamp Devil doesn't feature a single drop of blood. The CGI computer effects are mostly poor, the actual Swamp Devil creature itself when seen looks terrible & has very awkward stiff animation although I will say the possessed vines effects are quite good. The end is very poorly shot & edited with the viewer having to guess what is going on most of the time. There's nothing scary here & apart from the opening & closing sequences it's set entirely in the day which doesn't help the atmosphere, I mean a nice dark spooky swamp at night would be a perfect place to set a horror film but during the day it just doesn't have the same sort of ominous feel.With a supposed budget of about $2,000,000 one wonders where all the money went, there's an exploding pick-up truck at the end but apart from that nothing happens & you can't tell me those CGI effects cost that much. Although set in the deep south in the US this was filmed in Montréal in Québec in Canada. Most of these 'Creature Features' have at least one name actor & here it's the turn of the Oscar nominated Bruce Dern, Cindy Sampson as Melanie does alright & it helps that she's quite hot.Swamp Devil is another faceless Sci-Fi Channel 'Creature Feature' the likes of which sort of melt into one another, basically if you have seen a few of these 'Creature Features' before then you have seen Swamp Devil & the lack of any sort of gore or explanations for the events contained within doesn't help matters.