User Reviews

The SciFi channel has apparently fallen head over heels in love with their "original productions". Whether or not "Shapeshifter" is a SciFi original or not, it is representative of a bothersome trend...instead of trying to compete with other channels showing "classic" films or recent releases that are actually of some quality, give the viewer "original" garbage.

Along with this trend, SciFi has decided that their original movies should be R-rated, but since they want to be sensitive to the concerns of parents, they block out anything titillating (bare breasts, giving someone the finger, etc.) and leave uncut the disembowelment, chewing, decapitations, and spewing blood. Check out "Rest Stop" or "Haunted Prison" or some of their other recent flicks.

With that said, what can we say about "Shapeshifter"? I think that one thing in the script sums it all up: the screenwriter(s) actually think that the gas chambers used in executions use natural gas. That's right. They think that natural gas piped in through the usual cast iron pipes is pumped into the execution chamber.

Enough already...let's have some intelligent plotting and scripts.

So there's this Romanian guy who can change from a person into a monster. We start off with an MTV rap video (Hear that noise? That was 75% of the audience changing the channel) of him killing a guy while a prostitute gets splattered with his blood. Not a terribly auspicious way to begin the movie. He's arrested for something and taken to the local jail, which was apparently a prison at one point, but now the upper two floors are abandoned. The cops don't know about his shape-shifting power. We meet our guards, a couple of guys who behave like clowns and a female who's got a bit of a back-story (gee, wonder who will live 'till the end?). We meet the prisoners, a group of stereotypes who do the usual trash-talking for a few minutes. Then of course our shape-shifter does his changaroo thing and the fun begins.

I really wasn't too interested in this at the beginning, it looked like your typical "trying way too hard to be hip" type thing, but once the monster starts running around, it actually improves quite a bit. The guard babe strips down to her see-through T-shirt with half her bra sticking out, and the stereotypical prisoners turn into fairly normal human beings who are all fighting for their survival. They crawl through some crawlspace above the ceiling of the jail and get into the abandoned upper floors, which provide a suitably creepy place for them to have their various engagements with the killer critter. There's also a somewhat interesting story that develops about what the monster's motives are. The prisoner characters are used pretty well to add even more interest to the story as they of course aren't the most compassionate bunch towards their fellow prisoners. And the lead babe is quite a good actress, she really does a nice job with her butt-kicking heroine roll. And did I mention she's running around in a see-through T-shirt with half her bra sticking out? Well, it bears repeating.

Overall, after the crummy start, I thought this evolved into a fairly entertaining monster flick by the midway point. I give the beginning a 2/10 and the rest a slightly above average 6/10, which averages out to about 4.

I'm pretty open minded and can watch just about anything. This piece of garbage however has to be the worst thing i've had the displeasure to watch for years. It was so bad it made my eyes hurt.

The acting is pathetic, the plot is simple (but in the right hands good have being acceptable), the special effects are dire and the monster suit - lord have mercy, the rabbit suit on Donnie Darko looks better.

The director tries to be clever and uses flash filming to try and "enhance" the scene but in fact it's so annoying and unnecessary, it'll probably give people elliptic fits as well. The same scene is also used multiple times for different situations. For example the beast kills some one rips open their stomach and chows down on their intestines. The beast then tries to get the other prisoners but can't due to the bars either side of him. The film then loops back to the beast ripping up the mans stomach again and chowing down on his intestines!!!!!!!! This is not a rare occurrence either it must have happened about 4 times and the films only on 80 minutes! There's so much wrong with this film that I could write a 1000 word essay on it. The comments above were either made by studio plants of Stevie Wonder. Avoid at all costs!

and you stomp it out, and it full of doggie droppings?

Well, that's pretty much what this movie is.

The plot is that the Russian Mob (or maybe it's the Romanian mob. Who cares) unleashes a shape-shifting creature in America to bump off (or maybe it's break out) an informant from prison. Essentially, we are to believe that six convicts when left alone with a young hottie guard aren't going to gang rape her or try to escape, but are going to listen to her stupid directions that proceed to get nearly all of them killed. Right, these are the nice convicts. (Rolls eyes) Don't even need to put locks on the cells because they won't try to escape.

The movie is largely an excuse to use gore makeup and act as a showcase for young FX artists ("Yeah, ignore the stupid plot, but look at that cool makeup I did for $1.99 and some bottle deposits.") None of the actors can really be called actors.

Oh, hey, and Sci-Fi Channel employees, stop posting here with good ratings, you're not fooling anyone. I stopped watching your channel a long time ago. I just occasionally encounter your stuff at the video store.

Shapeshifter is set in a state prison where state law demands the warden has to have a minimum number of female deputies, ex-soldier Ginny Lydon (Jennifer Lee Wiggins) gets the job. It's Ginny's first night & she's placed in the low security wing where they keep the none violent & mentally unbalance prisoners, a new prisoner named Velku (Vaz Andreas) turns out to be a Romanian shapeshifter who can transform into a huge hairy monster thing. It's there to break fellow Romanian Marcoux (Marat Glazer) out & kill any witnesses in order to conceal it's human identity, however it never reckoned on Ginny Lydon who doesn't take too kindly to hairy monsters ripping her prisoners apart on her shift...

Co-written & directed by Gregory Lemkin one has to say that without wishing to sound too unkind Shapeshifter is awful. The script by Lemkin & A. Everett Howe is terrible, it's boring, it's predictable, it's slow, nothing of any interest happens & it goes on for too long, far too long. The character's are awful, the dialogue is awful, the comedy relief is awful & all the character motivations are awful like continually splitting up & wondering off down corridors on their own, not making enough of an effort to escape, standing around talking doing nothing in particular & this whole film is just bad. Very bad.

Director Lemkin doesn't do anything to make this rubbish any more watchable, there are annoying editing techniques where everything on the screen goes double & blurry, there's the usual irritating & pointless slow motion scenes & as a general rule Shapeshifter is a bit of an eyesore. There's some cheap gore, a few people have their guts ripped out & someone has their head bashed in, these scenes are pretty brief & sound batter than they actually are. There's no atmosphere, no tension & certainly no scares. The special effects are terrible, the actual hairy creature thing looks absolutely awful in every respect. Even with Lemkin trying to keep it in the shadows as much as possible can't disguise how bad this thing looks.

With a supposed budget of about $200,000 this was a low budget film & it show's, it's pretty bland, dull & incompetent. Shot in Los Angeles. The acting is terrible by no-one you've ever heard of plain & simple, enough said.

Shapeshifter is one of those awful horror films where nothing works, it's one of those films where after the first twenty odd minutes you just sit there waiting & hoping it will finish. Soon. Definitely not recommended.

Nothing like being a female prison guard at the Kent County lock-up and getting tested by a demonic shapeshifter. War experienced Ginny (Jennifer Lee Wiggins) must save herself and a group of prisoners from a shapeshifter sent there by the unnamed Eastern European mafia to kill a man who broke the code.

It started out fairly tolerable and then died. Acting and dialogue needed some help too.

Guide: F-bomb. N-word in hip-hop music, girl in plaid skirt getting spanked. nudity (Natalia Bellami/ Ava Bellamy)

"Shapeshifter" is one that needs a little work to become a pretty decent film.

**SPOILERS**

Newly discharged soldier Ginny Lydon, (Jennifer Lee Wiggins) accepts a job in a prison for damaged criminals. On her first day, a strange man, (Joel Hebner) is brought in that speaks no English, and the entire staff and inmates are freaked out. After witnessing him undergoing a transformation into a vicious creature, they round up the remaining inmates and guards to get them to safety. There, they try to form an escape plan. After a failed series of attempts, which all ends in slaughter, a startling revelation forces a change of plans that could save them.

The Good News: Yet another monster-in-a-prison film, this one isn't all that bad. The small prison it's set in is the perfect way to generate some suspense by showing that there's really nowhere to hide. That puts them constantly at danger from the creature, and it makes the peril all the more suspenseful. The creature itself is one of the best parts of the film. A fully imposing design, bulky with large arms, huge claws, and a really shocking looking head that really strikes fear on first impression. The fact that it's a real costume instead of some CGI creation goes a long way in creating a lot of fear in it. It wouldn't work as well the other way had it been done. The next best feature here is the gore, which is quite abundant and appealing. There's a very vicious mangling, a person ripped in half in the waist, a couple of stabbings, and a head bashed into a pulp, among other kills. There's even a scene where a person gnaws on their arm and chews through it. It is pretty gory when it needs to be. The small little moment here and there that was pretty nicely laid out was okay. The fact that it started early and fast was best, allowing for the action to start up and get the interest level way up quite rapidly.

The Bad News: Beyond those few reasons, there's very little to really like in this one. The small setting, while also a detriment by having a closed-off area to drive suspense from, also hurts it by showing off what little there is to the production. Normally, this isn't a problem, but when there's hardly anything to it that indicates it's just a small part of something bigger, then it hurts the film a little. This is an obviously small prison that does have the appearance of just being that big in real life. Another big problem is that there is a very fast start to it, but then the middle section slows down to a near crawl that is really painful to sit through. The action slows down to finally get some other scenes in, which is a shame as it started out so fast. By selecting that part of the movie to get to know the characters only slows down what momentum that was built up. There's also a problem with contrasting issues brought up here and there. It has several scenes that contradict each other that are quite obviously found. These reasons keep it from being the simple monster-on-the-loose film it could've so easily been.

The Final Verdict: Not all that bad at all, yet could've been helped by fixing a couple of small problems. Really recommended for fans of similar films from the company, and those interested in a look while not really find much to dislike.

Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language and Brief Nudity

This is kind of an "Alien"-set-in-a-prison type movie. A very attractive prison guard (Jennifer Wiggins) is trapped in lockup with some bad-boys and a guy who turns into a four-fingered monster with horns on the back of his head and the worst case of back hair you've ever seen. He spends the whole movie switching from monster to prisoner and back again. The movie starts off with a bang -- the movie's before-the-credits-roll sequence features the prisoner/monster escapes and kills a guy getting serviced by a prostitute, so you're on the hook immediately. Unfortunately, the movie gets a little slow at times. The producers spend too much time developing characters that you're just not interesting in getting to know better. But Wiggins is very enjoyable to look at, and unlike most SciFi movies (this was a SciFi Premier they bought the rights to, not a SciFi original) she makes it to the end. For the reason alone, this movie gets upgraded to a 4.

OK, here comes the spoiler (is it even possible to spoil this movie any more that the soiled piece of trash it already is?) At what time is this "monster" even a shapeshifter? I watched it with the sound off while on the Internet and for like 20 min it was the same scene over and over; just some guy in a bloody cell and finally he begins to gnaw on himself to discover there's an amulet in his arm. OK fine.. then he starts summoning, OK... not bad, then it drags out into a non-demon, shapeshifter that gets stronger when it eats flesh, yet still part of some occult plot according to our on-screen expert, some jailhouse nutbag that suddenly offers all of the 'dirt' to shovel into all the plot-holes. Which of course begins a hole within a hole that inevitably envelopes itself. But since the monster is trapped on the other side of the set, oops, I mean cell, it just keeps eating the same guard, over and over. Oh yea, did I mention a bunch of inmates are trapped with a super hot little Latina cop babe with a white tank-top who's having her first day in training at a prison, and they aren't even remotely suggesting raping her or anything other than dragging up her past to suggest she doesn't have what it takes to "command" them or be in charge. Omg am I writing a review of this garbage? A bunch long drawn out completely unbelievable dialog and premise that goes beyond the ability to render it understandable by any conscionable level. That's it, I am not awake. I must be having one of those dreams that makes no sense again. You know the one. Yer dreaming, you start realizing it and think, "man, this dream would make a great movie". And then you wake up, except the writers never did for this stupid nutshell...

They did save a bundle though filming in just two rooms, and clothing the monster in a $40 outfit. Oh and not having a script or any concept.

A new prison guard Ginny Lydon gets trapped in an old prison with several uninteresting stereotypes one of whom is being pursued by a shapeshifting monster, the latter creature being also an enforcer for the Romanian mafia. So a typical monster on the loose in an enclosed environment kind of film, which to say the least is not that original. In fact it's mostly moribund. On the positive side it has decent gore effects and Jennifer Lee Wiggins wearing a flimsy t-shirt. The monster suit itself is bearable so there's that I suppose. On the whole not a shape worth shifting.

We saw this on SciFi Channel.

It was clearly so low budget that it became part of the fun. We saved it and watched it late at night, mainly yelling back at the television.

The odd thing was that the first half hour was actually pretty good. There was some good suspense as the lead character and Shapeshifter gets introduced, but then the film got bogged down.

All the kills were pretty obvious and the gore was less realistic and more exaggerated, almost as if the filmmakers were just having fun with it. I'm not sure the style would be very satisfying to hard core horror fans.

The best part was actually the beast, the old "man in a rubber suit," more more fun and way more campy than a computer made monster. It has that old fifties creature feature vibe.

There are a few cool scenes - the kill with the old guy by the door, the scenes in the catwalks etc. The actors vary from pretty good (Marcoux, Ginny ) to somewhat amateur.

Ok, here goes. Begining was pretty blend... inmate loses his shii then we find out why... Russian Mob , Demon possesed i mean, it gets good. Camera work ok, not best quality or shoukd i say, movie theather quality but story line was good , acting was good. We got gore and lots of it. I was happy with the outcome and ending left us with possability of a sequal? Not sure dince its 2023 and film came out in 2005. None the less, i would be up for one, I'm sure budget was the issue but lets get a fund raiser going and get a sequal on the way. I'll gladly play victim #2. Great work everyone. Enjoyed the film.