Decoys (2004)
DVD
***
Directed by
Matthew Hastings
Written by
Matthew Hastings
Tom Berry
Cast
Corey Sevier .... Luke
Stefanie von Pfetten .... Lilly
Kim Poirier .... Constance
Elias Toufexis .... Roger
Meghan Ory .... Alex
Enis Esmer .... Gibby
Krista Morin .... Vikki Vickers
Marc Trottier .... Bobby Johnson
Carrie Colak .... Natasha
Richard Burgi .... Detective Francis Kirk
Nicole Eggert .... Detective Amanda Watts
Don Hastings .... Medical Examiner
Sarah Smyth .... Rosedale Princess
Leah Graham .... Melody
Mike Lobel .... Halloween Jock
R
96 mins
Time to go back to those crazy days of college with Decoys! Parties
with heavy drinking, occasional lesbianism, and aliens that eat human
DNA!
To start off, the DVD menu is a little on the drab side. While the
box art is certainly appealing, mostly because it captures the intent
of the film so well, just putting the box art on the DVD menu has been
done to death. It's so unoriginal that it loses any appeal that it may
have had.
But the film itself is what we're truly after here, so let's have a look.
Decoys is the story of a fellow who comes home one Halloween night
to find the house a little colder than he expected. A LOT colder. So
cold that his roommates seem to have frozen to death. IN the house.
Then, for reasons that are utterly unfathomable, we shift off to
another college where a couple of very attractive pre-med coeds who
like the cold have just moved into a freshman dorm.
And if you've spent any time in a freshman dorm recently, you know
that this spells a whole herd of horny teenage guys who should be
making asses out of themselves to get noticed.
But these chicks aren't the norm.
They have tentacles that sprout from their spines.
They also have a thing for liquid nitrogen.
The first thing you notice right off is at the nineteen minute,
eighteen second mark. There's a hot blonde coed on stage next to the
school's hockey captain at a sorority rush mixer with booze for all.
And what does a random wit in the audience shriek?
"Give him a kiss!"
Obviously someone put a lot of research into this script. Because no
one would EVER suggest anything stronger than THAT at a college party.
No one would EVER be so crass as to suggest that the young lady part
with some clothing...say...her top? Never.
The rest of the movie spreads outward like a fairly standard alien
murder mystery kind of deal. Our steadily dwindling Scooby Gang
searches for answers to the great mystery of who are these tentacle
chicks, where do they come from, what do they want on their pizza, that
they have a serious and debilitating fear of fire, so on and so forth,
on into video eternity.
While there are some terribly amusing special effects--especially
the tentacles that show up on a regular basis--we all know that special
effects alone do not a movie make. The plot is all the more important,
and it's not actively offensive. It's fairly standard stuff. Yes,
they're distracting from cliches and obvious holes in the plot and
horrific dialogue featuring phrases like "To finally uncover them for
who they truly are." with tons of nudity and huge and
impressive...tracts of LAND...every few minutes (Monty Python fans
should get that right off.).
It's obvious the overt displays of strategic and ample portions of
the female anatomy are designed to draw our attention away from a plot
with a far lower endowment than the female leads.
But you know what? This is somehow all right. This is an old cliche
that hearkens back to the bad old flood-the-market eighties, where
every third slasher film was a race to see how fast the female lead
could get her top off. It's almost a homage.
And yes, we've got our share of annoyances. Annoyances like "Gibby."
Gibby is our standard rap star gone insane, spouting all the latest
shiznits and off the hook's enough for any three useless wannabes.
The ending is a real barnburner, and I mean that LITERALLY. Wait
until you see the last fifteen minutes of Decoys. There are all manner
of twists, turns, amusing sidebars, puns, and flamethrowers. Seriously!
It's worth it! It is an EXCELLENT ending, with fantastic twists. Easily
one of the best I've seen in quite some time.
The special features include English (for once!) subtitles, a making
of featurette and trailers for "Asylum of the Damned," "Starship
Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation" (it should be noted here that they
included the entire title, and the appropriate kudos should be given
for this show of respect.), "Hellboy," "Kaena: The Prophecy," "The Lost
Skeleton of Cadavra," and "Everquest 2." Surprisingly, there is no
trailer for "Decoys," a normally standard feature not included.
All in all, despite some hackeneyed dialogue and a rather
predictable plotline, Decoys overcomes its handicaps to emerge as a
fairly solid title.
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