{"id":15122,"date":"2014-10-07T06:24:20","date_gmt":"2014-10-07T06:24:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=15122"},"modified":"2015-06-29T22:03:42","modified_gmt":"2015-06-30T02:03:42","slug":"animal-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2014\/10\/07\/animal-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"Animal (2014)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"animal-2014\"<\/a>Anything featuring Elizabeth Gillies or Keke Palmer gets my automatic attention, so \u201cAnimal\u201d was really an easy sell for me. True, it\u2019s another horror film from Chiller Films, but, you know\u2014Elizabeth Gillies and Keke Palmer. So, I\u2019m willing to compromise. Thankfully \u201cAnimal\u201d ends up being a very entertaining and creepy monster in the house horror film that feels like it could have been made in the mid-nineties. That\u2019s by no means a caveat, as Brett Simmons\u2019 \u201cAnimal\u201d is a healthy amalgam of \u201cThe Descent\u201d and \u201cFeast,\u201d with a hint of \u201cNight of the Living Dead.\u201d Simmons doesn\u2019t try to break the mold. But he doesn\u2019t strive to regurgitate the same old tropes, either.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cAnimal\u201d begins with a very interesting prologue, as four hikers are being chased by a gigantic beast in the woods that consumes one of the hikers\u2019 wives (a blink and you\u2019ll miss it cameo from rapper Eve!). We fast forward to an undisclosed period where five friends gather for a camping trip deep in to the woods. After finding their desired route cut off for \u201cForrest Rejuvenation,\u201d they decide to take an alternate path. All seems to be going well until they\u2019re faced with a vicious otherworldly monster that they interrupt while it\u2019s feasting on human innards. During much confusion, and a shocking display of the beast\u2019s feeding habits, the friends high tail it in to the woods hoping to get back to their car. While hiding they stumble upon a barricaded cabin and are let in, barely surviving their escape. Much to their surprise, the survivors in the cabin are the previous hikers, and now they\u2019re all stuck in the house with the beast lurking outside, anxious to eat. \u201cAnimal\u201d comes together quite well with very good performances and a great sense of tension and friction among the characters.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s pretty clear the survivors within the cabin have been through the wringer, and now it\u2019s our characters turns to find a way to survive. To make matters worse, the beast is intelligent and is looking for weak points in the barricade to enter and feast on the people boxed in the cabin. A lot of \u201cAnimal\u201d is the classic monster in the house horror movie, where the beast is in its elements, dueling with a bunch of city slickers that can barely walk in the woods without tumbling over. Director Brett Simmons composes a great cast that manages to convince us of the inherent terror. Keke Palmer and Gillies are especially good as the pair of friends trying to keep their remaining group from becoming monster food. Palmer is the stand out though as the obsessive compulsive Alissa, whose own intellect becomes a challenge for the monster as she devises plans and traps that promise to keep them living a little longer. I especially enjoyed Paul Iacono as the group\u2019s erratic music loving friend whose anxiety and sanity unravels the longer they fight for their lives.<\/p>\n

Iacono\u2019s turn as the horrified Sean feels very genuine, especially when he finds himself trapped or at the mercy of the monster. I also loved Amaury Nolasco, whose turn as the Harry Cooper of the group is fantastic. The beast in \u201cAnimal\u201d is the classic Man in the Suit traditional effects, and it makes \u201cAnimal\u201d so much better than if reduced to nothing but CGI. The monster effects are absolutely fantastic with sharp claws, jagged teeth, and blank dark eyes, and director Simmons delivers on a rampaging, chaotic, cannibalistic beast with an unquenchable thirst for humans. Where the monster is from and how it hunts is delightfully ambiguous, too, as it\u2019s clear it can learn and understand, which makes it a valid threat when we bear witness to how it tears through its victims. \u201cAnimal\u201d is a tightly paced and breezy horror film with top notch production qualities and performances. For folks that appreciate this kind of horror movie, \u201cAnimal\u201d is a surefire gory good time. And I mean: Elizabeth Gillies and Keke Palmer. Need I say more?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anything featuring Elizabeth Gillies or Keke Palmer gets my automatic attention, so \u201cAnimal\u201d was really an easy sell for me. True, it\u2019s another horror film from Chiller Films, but, you know\u2014Elizabeth Gillies and Keke Palmer. So, I\u2019m willing to compromise. Thankfully \u201cAnimal\u201d ends up being a very entertaining and creepy monster in the house horror […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,12,17],"tags":[50,477,678,1012,1087],"class_list":["post-15122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-halloween-horror-month","category-movie-reviews","category-tv-tomb","tag-a","tag-horror","tag-monsters","tag-survival","tag-thriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15122"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15124,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15122\/revisions\/15124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}