By Geno McGahee
“It means dead meat. You know, like what you play with every night.” – Carrion
Oh, what a trip down memory lane I am taking recently. The 1990s were a dark time for horror films with SCREAM and THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT becoming the highlights that would steer the genre. When 2000 hit, horror made a comeback of sorts and the video stores became packed with new straight to video titles. They were low budget and silly at times, but they were not without charm. Every Friday I would hit Hollywood Video or Blockbuster in search of one of these new titles and yes, that was my Friday evening plans. So what? And I would find movies like the 2003 monster movie “DARK WALKER.” The cover art is amazing, featuring a monster with a blade and like most movies of this time, they put the attractive cast in the blade’s reflection.
Around this time, carving into a pumpkin and blood coming out was popular. We saw this in JACK O’LANTERN, a film that came out about the same time as this. I don’t know why this was scary or disturbing, but it was used quite often by several films. If I bought a watermelon and cut into it and blood came out, I might be a little sad that I killed a watermelon, but I wouldn’t be terrified and the viewer probably won’t be afraid either. What could a bloody pumpkin do to you anyway?
Robert Magee (David Dewitt) and his wife, Nancy (Brenda Matthews) open up a haunted house amusement park and I immediately couldn’t stop thinking that David Dewitt resembled that dude from REVENGE OF THE NERDS. I couldn’t shake it even when the movie concluded. Robert meets up with the head of the team of contractors that are fixing up the land, Gus (James Inch), and there is a certain resistance to cut down all the trees. Robert might fear the wrath of the Lorax. Gus convinces him that it’s all about the green and Robert relents, but when a tree is cut down, it appears to be bleeding or at least appears that somebody dropped some stage blood on it in the most unconvincing way. Either way, that tree was not meant to be cut down.
We then meet up with the workers at the park and I found it kind of amusing at just how forced each character was. We had the goth girl, Carrion (Emily VanSonnenberg), who wrote things like “Satan” and pentagrams in her notebook because she is…goth. Goth people do that. They just write the name “Satan” in every notebook they can find. We then have Reef (Clive Hawkins), a stoner that reminds you every five minutes about how great it is to be a stoner. You have the rich girl that keeps commenting on her daddy and how she lives in a mansion. You have BJ (Rick Irvin) …well, OK, I’ll stop there. What man in their right mind would go by the name “BJ”? That sounds like an offer to me. “Go see BJ,” sounds exciting.
Two of the workers at the park, Josh (Michael Sage) and the psychic Maggie (Kathleen Taylor), begin to hit it off, but there is an aura of mystery around Maggie. She senses this danger and gets visions, and then there is a caretaker that walks like bigfoot and says a sentence or two and then disappear. Maggie is speaking to him at one point and then turns around and he’s gone. What a mysterious man, and you don’t find many mysterious men in overalls. I find most in overalls to be straight forward.
The damage to the land brings forth the curse of the Dark Walker and I have to say that this movie was moving quite slowly until this beast came along. The monster looks so incredibly cool that I found myself not caring if the dialogue stunk or the acting was less than stellar. There he is again! There’s the monster! Don’t he look cool? That’s how I was feeling. Dark Walker had character. There is some FRIDAY THE 13TH influence with him, surely, but he has a unique look and presence. The story may lack but the monster is one of the coolest I’ve seen, period.
Maggie continues to have her visions and people begin to die. Sheriff Gillis (Brad Potts) is on the case, and I have to say that Potts was a standout in this. His tough guy performance with the terrible haircut made for some good entertainment. Potts was really good in this. Gillis actually does one thing that nobody else could do. He beat the hell out of Dark Walker with his bare hands, but he made the fatal mistake of turning his back. It’s gonna take more than a head butt to put Dark Walker down for good. I would have loved to see Gillis say: “There’s some police brutality bitch,” and then turn his back, but it wasn’t to be.
Dark Walker continues his killing ways and the reasons for his rage are revealed, which are pretty simple. This film is rather simple and borrows from a lot of other films. PUMPKINHEAD, FRIDAY THE 13TH and even some elements of SCREAM are evident here, but the blend comes together pretty well in the end. For a straight to video, low budget monster movie, it made up for the bad dialogue and simple story with a lot of Dark Walker. I think they knew that the monster was badass and they elected to push him into the story whenever possible.
DARK WALKER is definitely worth a watch. There isn’t much for character development, the acting is all over the place, but if you are looking for a cool monster, it’s hard to beat this movie. I would have loved to see a sequel to this with a more focused effort on the writing and story-telling. They have a great-looking killer and this film was in the video stores. I remember it. They should have made a sequel and just stepped up the game. By this time, we could have been on DARK WALKER VIII or so. Well, that wasn’t to be, but this as a standalone movie is still pretty decent. It’s not great, but I enjoyed it and I think most horror fans will find a reason to like it. I recommend it.
Rating: 6/10
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