DECOYS

Reviewed By: Brian Edwards

Starring: Krista Morin, Nicole Eggert, Kim Poirier, Stefanie von Pfetten,

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Ok - for a start - this film bills itself as SPECIES meets AMERICAN PIE not a promising start. The plot concerns a Canadian High School having a spate of mysterious deaths where the victims have been found frozen solid

It is quickly discovered by a first year that one of the sorority houses is actually populated by aliens and not the blond and beautiful teens that he first thought.

With the film centring around an alien invasion starting in a High School and only one teen realising that others at the school are actually aliens I was expecting this straight to video offering to be a low budget attempt at THE FACULTY. I was right, to a point. Where THE FACULTY was a pastiche of B Movie scifi/horror with lashings of pop culture slickness, DECOYS is more of a mishmash of horror/scifi/teen comedy and black comedy. There is the occasional success in each of the attempted genres. I did grin if not laugh at least once, there were some reasonable CGI alien affects, painful deaths and the most underplayed of the genres, black comedy, is actually where I feel the director would have excelled in if he hadn’t chosen the ‘trying to please everyone’ route.

Ok, so that is my rant. There was potential, the cast didn’t stink, the effects were serviceable but the whole film didn’t really have anything to offer (unless you count a quick boob shot). Its is like none of the production staff could decide whether to play it for laughs or not.

Unmistakably there is a certain charm to this film (I say this about most of the dross that comes through my letter box) but there is not enough of any one thing to make me watch it again. Actually the only thing that could make me watch it again is several pints of JOHN SMITHS and a few mates round, as you often find that this type of film can make good post pub entertainment.

There is a behind the scenes featurette on the DVD, it was the least they could offer for an inexcusable waste of digital media. "