The title is great and the idea was intriguing, so there was potential to be had in Chupacabra vs. The Alamo. Sadly, its potential that was never really met. While Chupacabra vs. The Alamo is not a good movie and has much of what is so wrong with SyFy's movies in the first place, it was not terrible either and SyFy have certainly done much worse. There are things that are done decently, there is some energy to be seen, the music is not too generic or overbearing and the acting from Erik Estrada and Julia Benson is better than average. The rest of the acting ranges from over-the-top to bland, Aleks Paunovic doesn't have much worthwhile to do and the role is rather strange. And Nicole Munoz badly overdoes the stereotypical bratty daughter character, who is written in such a way that you actually want to strangle her. Chupacabra vs. The Alamo is also the sort of movie that screams of a Danny Trejo cameo but never happened. In all fairness though, the actors do have to work with really clichéd and clunky-sounding dialogue and characters that have no development or likability to them(there's an effect of them being there only for the sake of them having to be there as part of the movie). The pacing is somewhat uneven, there is energy of course, but it can also get rather erratic, especially in the attack scenes, while the melodramatic moments and how the story unfolds takes too much time to do so. The story is to be polite utter nonsense, it also takes too much time to build up(90 minutes or so in until they reach the Alamo), the attacks are not very inventive or memorable instead coming across as predictable and too hurriedly edited, and it is really bogged down by the melodrama. While there are worse-looking movies from SyFy, Chupacabra vs. The Alamo is not really that well-made. The settings are drab and not that much different from many other SyFy movies from the same genre, and the editing is too choppy and frantic. The CGI for the dogs looks horrible, and the dogs themselves are too cute and indifferently designed to be taken seriously as menacing antagonists, which is another reason why the impact of the attacks were diminished as much as they were. And I also did not like the use of the green-screen shots for the parts with the motorcycle, they look amateurish, look out of place and are over-used. On the whole, there is definitely worse to be seen but even when you know what to expect this was an example of good potential wasted by mediocre at best execution. 3.5/10 Bethany Cox
