Wes Craven used to make good Horror films once. His disturbing debut "The Last House on The Left" of 1972 remains his absolute greatest achievement up to date, and "The Hills Have Eyes" (1977) and "A Nightmare On Elm Street" (1984) are without doubt classics of the Horror genre. After "Nightmare", however, Craven obviously thought that his name alone was enough to make any film a masterpiece, and he subsequently began to direct crap, such as the immensely overrated "Scream" trilogy in the 90s, and films like this "Shocker" of 1989. "Shocker" is such an incredibly stupid thing that it hardly qualifies as a Horror film. It is not quite clear to me if this was actually ever intended to be scary, or if it is just meant to be some kind of (terrible) spoof.
"Shocker" is about a serial killer (Mitch Pileggi) who, after slaughtering a couple of families, gets sentenced to death. After going to the electric chair, however, the psycho, who used to work as a TV-repairman, uses electricity and TV rays to come back from the dead and carry on with his murders... The film doesn't start out very well, but the beginning is bearable, at least. It gets dumber and dumber with each passing minute, however, and nothing in the film makes any sense. Many elements of the movie have no reason other than to serve as an excuse for how the story goes on. After raising from the dead, the killer can only be stopped by a necklace that suddenly has supernatural powers, for example. The last fifteen minutes are so damn stupid that I would almost call them an insult to the viewer. The idiocy of the film's climax, in which the killer and the hero (Peter Berg) engage in a chase through different TV shows, truly has to be seen to be believed.
The score always seems quite out of place. Alice Cooper's "No More Mr Nice Guy" is a cool song, but I still wouldn't call it very original to play one song over and over again throughout a movie. The performances are also quite terrible. Mitch Pileggi is passable as the villain, but he is anything but scary and seems like a thuggish redneck more than a psychopath. All things considered, there is hardly a thing about "Shocker" that didn't annoy me. A damn shame, since Craven used to be a good director once. Watch his earlier films instead, "Shocker" has almost nothing to be recommended for. Avoid!
- SPOILERS! -
"Shocker" is about a serial killer (Mitch Pileggi) who, after slaughtering a couple of families, gets sentenced to death. After going to the electric chair, however, the psycho, who used to work as a TV-repairman, uses electricity and TV rays to come back from the dead and carry on with his murders... The film doesn't start out very well, but the beginning is bearable, at least. It gets dumber and dumber with each passing minute, however, and nothing in the film makes any sense. Many elements of the movie have no reason other than to serve as an excuse for how the story goes on. After raising from the dead, the killer can only be stopped by a necklace that suddenly has supernatural powers, for example. The last fifteen minutes are so damn stupid that I would almost call them an insult to the viewer. The idiocy of the film's climax, in which the killer and the hero (Peter Berg) engage in a chase through different TV shows, truly has to be seen to be believed.
The score always seems quite out of place. Alice Cooper's "No More Mr Nice Guy" is a cool song, but I still wouldn't call it very original to play one song over and over again throughout a movie. The performances are also quite terrible. Mitch Pileggi is passable as the villain, but he is anything but scary and seems like a thuggish redneck more than a psychopath. All things considered, there is hardly a thing about "Shocker" that didn't annoy me. A damn shame, since Craven used to be a good director once. Watch his earlier films instead, "Shocker" has almost nothing to be recommended for. Avoid!