English horror scribe James Herbert's horror novels have proved difficult to adapt to the motion picture medium. "The Survivor", a brilliant novel that was ripped off by Peter Weir's "Fearless" and a handful of other movies, was a rotten pile of smoking crap. George Cosmatos's "Dark Eyes", based on Herbert's groundbreaking "The Rats", was almost unwatchable and totally unconvincing. Shifting its events from London to Canada (standing in for a US city) was its first cardinal sin. At least "Fluke" retains some of the Herbert novel's heart; it is much lighter, but it eliminates one of the novel's greatest scenes (the dog meeting a frog). It takes the character of Fluke (a human reborn as a dog) and some thematic elements from the novel, but it doesn't adhere to much else. Still, it's a well told story (with some mushy interludes) about a reincarnated man (on four legs) who attempts to reconcile with his loved ones and, in the process, is forced to accept some harsh truths about himself. The confronting of these harsh truths is what gives "Fluke" its depth and originality. The animals communicate telepathically, so we hear human voices over images of dogs with mouths that don't move much; the concept takes some getting used to, and it didn't really work for me. The interchanges themselves were fine, but the voices felt disembodied (though not as disembodied as the voice-over in the dreadful "Jonathan Livingston Seagull"). The performances of Mathew Modine and Eric Stolz are solid, as are the canine star turns. This is one of the better Herbert adaptations in that it is a decently made movie, but it still doesn't capture Herbert's bleak world view.
Review of Fluke
