They

THEY
Starring: Laura Regan, Marc Blucas, Ethan Embry, Dagmara Dominczyk
Directed by: Robert Harmon

Style: Boogeyman-style horror
Blood and Guts: 1
Fright Factor: 2
Laugh Factor: 1
Weapons of choice: Light, darkness
Overall rating: 2 out of 5

Julie Lund (Regan) had it rough as a kid. Nightmares of shadow creatures plagued her and her friend Billy (Jon Abrahams) growing up, but now, on the verge of achieving her Masters in Psychology, all of that appears to be behind her. That is, until Billy shows up and convinces her that their nightmares were real as kids. Even worse, those creatures marked them as children and are now coming for them once more. Together with two of Billy's friends (Embry and Dominczyk), Julie fights to find out how to escape these creatures when all darkness leads to their world.

The premise of this film is great, which makes it that much more of a shame that it was hacked to pieces by the studio. Any time ten different writers work on a movie, you know there is trouble. For me, that is my biggest complaint about the film: inconsistency. The story never seems to be able to figure out what it wants to be and thus never really makes a consistent style choice. In fact, towards the end of the film, the film even breaks its primary convention by having the creatures attack someone in a well-lit, undarkened room. For me, that is unforgivable.

There are a few good moments in the film, such as when Julie is stalked through the subway tunnels, but they never build off of one another. A movie that feeds off of the characters being placed in threatening situations needs to have each situation more intense, however slightly, than the previous event. Otherwise, you have a series of small scares with no big payoff because the audience can predict that nothing will get any scarier.

Another weak point of this film is that they waste their supporting cast. If you have a film where there are really only four characters of any interest, those characters really need to be developed and respected until their untimely end, which is part of what builds the momentum of a fright flick. However, this film acts like the supporting characters are no better than the random party guy who wanders off and is the warm-up victim for the killer. Nothing is accomplished other than you get a scene that is tense but doesn't scare us because we don't care about a character the movie doesn't care about.

Overall, this film needed those making it to care about its story and its character more. Instead, it is chopped up and dumped onto the market in the hopes for a quick buck. It's too bad, because this film really did have promise.