The carnival is coming to town, which usually
means fun times, but considering this here is a horror movie
doing double duty as a Sci-Fi Channel original feature… there
will be no good times. For nobody. That
theoretically includes you and me sitting on the other side of
the television.
The man from New Jersey rides into town, this town being
someplace I can't remember, but I know in reality its
Canada. So this guy rides into town in his cargo van and
in this van is a monster that he captured in New Jersey and
then proceeds to sell it to Cap the scurrilous carnival boss
(Alan C. Peterson). Since this monster is from New
Jersey, it stands to reason that it has to be the legendary
13th child, the New Jersey Devil itself. Personally, if
I had just captured a monster I would cut off its head and
stick it on my wall then put the rest of it on the grill
because there's nothing like lightly seasoned Jersey Devil
medium rare, but then that's just me.
Cap is so happy to have this new edition to his carnival that
he kills the guy who delivered it. Why did he do
this? I do not know. I mean is he going to run and
tell his friends that he just sold a monster to the carnival
and we can't have that? But then Cap is showcasing his
new monster attraction for all in town to see so it's not like
it's a big secret. I guess the reason is that Cap is
just an asshole.
Lording over this town is hardworking Sheriff Atlas (Lou
Diamond Phillips) and he's not too terribly concerned that the
carnival is in town, I mean it's just Ferris Wheels and
soothsayers and freaky people, but Pastor Owen (Vlasta Vrana)
swears that this carnival is the work of Satan himself, will
bring society to ruin and needs to be shut down
immediately. Pastor Owen clearly hates freedom, though
in retrospect he was totally right about this.
Since the pastor is such a blowhard, Atlas
makes his way down to the carnival to check it out, sees the
freaks, meets Samara the hot French soothsayer (Simone
Elise-Girard) and then Cap shows him the monster. Atlas
asks "Is this safe!" Cap assures us it is and the party
is on.
So the carnival is a going, folks are having fun, but the main
attraction is the monster and the monster is pissed the f@#k
off being stuck in its cage. Then the pastor's badly
misbehaving son had to go and throw popcorn at the monster,
clearly not aware that monsters DO NOT like to have popcorn
thrown at them. A monster would rather you pee on it
than throw popcorn at it. How did he not know
this? Now the Jersey Devil has busted out and it's
flying around the countryside causing a ruckus. First
order of business? Eat that punk that was throwing
popcorn at it. Next order of business? Hang out in
the woods out of sight and growl a lot. A lot.
Final order of business? Ruin the fun event because
monsters hate fun events. We could ask why folks were at
the fun event when they knew full well that there was a
murderous, carnivorous monster flying around, but we won't ask
that. Hopefully Sheriff Atlas and the hot soothsayer who
sees stuff that nobody on the planet can decipher, including
herself, until after everybody is dead when it becomes clear,
can save the earth. Worst fortune teller ever.
'Carny' was directed by one Sheldon Wilson whom, much to my
surprise, I'm on the verge of becoming a Sheldon Wilson
completist. The man has made like eleven movies and I've
seen all but two of those, one of which hasn't even been
released as of yet. Of course most of this is because
Mr. Wilson sits in the chair of a lot of Sci-Fi originals such
as 'Snowmageddon' or 'Kaw' or 'Killer Mountain' or 'Mothman',
thus me and Sheldon have a long, sordid history
together.
Thus we have 'Carny' which we had to watch since we are
attempting to watch every Sci-Fi original film ever made and
the question would be 'Is Carny a good movie?' No, it is
not. Then is Carny a bad movie? No, not really, at
least in the sense that we've seen worse. Thus what we
are stuck with is a completely rudimentary, run of the mill,
thrill-a-twenty-minute monster yarn.
I did like the way the monster looked, though it was kind of
small. I'm sure some CGI was used on occasion but this
is one of those rare instances where the CGI didn't look like
total ass. LDP is the only 'name' actor in the movie and
he, like most of the performances in the movie, were like the
movie on the whole, that being run of the mill, or adequate
for what they were asked to do.
There were a few funny bits like the boy throwing the popcorn
getting eaten by the monster, which I'm sure would've had an
audience standing and cheering if this movie had played in a
theater somewhere. Then there was the popcorn boy's BFF
who survived the monster attack only to get eaten later when
his mom pulled over, in the woods, in the middle of nowhere,
to tell the boy how much she loved him. Yup, the Jersey
Devil ate 'em both 'cause his mom is dumb. The truly
awesome part about this scene was that mom was driving a Chevy
Monza. A freaking Chevy Monza. How in the hell did
the special effects team get that car moving? At first I
thought it was stupid that she pulled over in the middle of
nowhere, but I'm pretty certain the Monza was on the verge of
overheating anyway, so death was inevitable.
While 'Carny' was almost a complete waste of time, at least in
the sense it wasn't good and it wasn't bad enough to be
entertaining, I did see a moving Chevy Monza. That has
got to be worth something.
