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Skull Heads (2009)
When it comes to Charles Band movies I have to say that I’ve always kind of maintained a love/hate relationship with them. Some of them I love and others I hate, but I was pretty excited to sit down and watch this one from the moment I had it in my hands. The goofy cover was intriguing enough and I was delighted to see how Band was going to bring creatures like the Skullheads alive.
“Skull Heads” is the story of a strange family that live all by themselves in a huge castle in which they have everything they need to leave. The daughter in the family is seemingly the rebel of them all sitting in her room listening to her iPod. Only thing is that there is something wrong with these people. The daughter hides her iPod from everyone, the mother is starving for attention and the husband is just kind of an asshole dictator of the home. One day a group of movie producers’ show up to see if they can use the castle for an upcoming film that they are making, much to the delight of the family’s daughter. Only her father isn’t too keen on visitors and will have nothing of it. He doesn’t trust outsiders very much and with good reason. Also there are little skull headed creatures roaming the property and the daughter refers to them as the protectors. Good thing for them too because the film people might not be everything that they say they are.
After really enjoying Full Moon’s release of “Evil Bong 2: King Bong” I started to realize what I liked about Full Moon. Sure, they aren’t the greatest movies in the history of the genre, but they do tend to be a lot of fun. They’re always good for when you want to just sit back, relax and turn your brain off for about an hour and a half and just vibe on. This one however showed me the opposite side that was kind of washed away the fun side I was left with. The movie itself is just way too overcomplicated for it’s own good taking away the fun part that I was just talking about. What you the viewer is left with however is a string of poor dialog and skullheads running around with glowing eyes virtually doing nothing. Outside of shooting a laser beam out of their eyes every now and again, they’re pretty much pointless in the grand scheme of things in the movie.
With all of that being said Robyn Sydney pulls out an alright performance as the family’s daughter but even that is a bit of a stretch. I’ve seen Sydney pull of some great comedic stuff in other films but here she’s given totally serious material and that disappointed me to say the least. Also some of the changes her character goes through in the movie are some of the most annoying and stupid changes possible. It makes you go from feeling some sympathy for the character but it’s ruined time and time again. Then again, some fans might be pleased to find out she’s naked in this one, so there you go.
I have two main issues with this movie however that to me are just inexcusable. First off the skullheads that the movie is named after aren’t much more than an afterthought. They build up this legend for them but they barely do a damn thing in the movie. They are the main selling point for the movie and to do what they did with them here isn’t anything short than a rip off. Also the ending of the film is just purely terrible. I won’t give it away here but the ending pretty much negates everything you’ve just watched in the movie and most likely will set this up for a sequel (lets hope not).
Overall “Skull Heads” is one disappointing mess that I think a lot of fans will be put off of if they spend their money on it. It just doesn’t deliver anything that you’d expect from it and that’s really why I didn’t care for it at all. My advice for this one is to AVOID.
Rating - *
-Ed Demko
