Man-Thing (2005)

On the plus side this film looks great truth be told, despite the low budget and little faith from Marvel the film does look the business. The swamp looks pretty much like your perfect grotty, smelly, marsh-like festering pit with gnarled trees and lots of creeping vines, I was actually impressed as I really was expecting a cheap looking B-movie. Again I must throw kudos on the creature effects too, a mix of CGI and rubber suit (I think), a great set of buzzing red eyes, nice creature sound effects and good use of the swamp for assisting in the stealth approach, all add for a decent looking creature not too far from how 'Spawn' looked in his film debut (CGI version).

On the down side, a major downer really, is the fact the original comicbook story has been completely ejected and replaced with a simple horror based yarn. Now the title creature is simply a monster that kills anyone with no remorse or mercy, its basically a total bad guy. If your gonna make a film about a Marvel character then you really should stick to the original story, BUT to be honest the horror plot they have used does work even though its predictable and cliched. The makers really should have decided what they wanted to do here.

So as said the plot is dumb and unoriginal but it does work as a fairly decent adult horror slasher type with plenty of gruesome moments, plenty of blood, plenty of body parts and absolutely no hang ups on not going down the kiddie route, well done. But then don't call this a Marvel comicbook adaptation when it isn't, make it an independent horror film.

Other issues abound also such as major plot holes and some major explanation's needed simply because they haven't followed the comicbook, so no one watching will know what on earth is actually happening and why. On a final note despite the creature actually looking pretty darn good it also looks nothing like the original 'Man-Thing' should look like, thus you wonder why they even called it Man-Thing when really this film, even though its quite fun, isn't really anything to do with the Marvel character as I said.

Semi decent horror flick but has nothing much in common with the character its suppose to be about, strange. But on the whole its still good fun.

4.5/10