Komodo
 (1999)
review by Head Cheeze

The "creators" of Jurassic Park take a perfectly good idea and turn it into a sappy, soporific pile of melodramatic family friendly shite. Take every conceivable TV horror movie cliche, add a sack full of third-rate actors, and CGI effects that look as though they were created on a Game Boy, and you have Komodo, one of the most infuriating film experiences of my life.

Young Patrick (Zegers) and his family head to their isolated island home off the coast of Georgia for a vacation. When Patrick wanders off to the island's desolate oil refinery, he stumbles upon a baby lizard, which he follows, and bumps right into it's momma, a giant Komodo Dragon. The Komodo follows Patrick home, and slaughters his family, leaving the young boy orphaned and traumatized to the point of blocking out all memory of the incident.

Enter Victoria (Hennessy), Patrick's state appointed therapist, who believes that taking the boy back to the island will trigger the boy's memory so he can make peace with his inner demons. Victoria and Patrick arrive on the island and almost instantly encounter the beasties, who take out two of their travel companions before Oates (Burke), a biologist hired by the oil company to rid the island of the dragons, saves them, even though it will piss off his boss, who'd rather the "tourists" be eaten rather than be rescued and let the world know it was killing nearly extinct lizards to keep the property value competitive.

What I wanna know is why didn't they simply tell someone that their island HAD Komodo Dragons in the first place? I mean, it would certainly be of some zoological importance that the creatures be contained and used to help repopulate the dying species, right? See, if they did that, the Komodos would have been taken home, all of the folks who died would be alive and well, and this film wouldn't have been made.

I really fucking hated Komodo. The idea of an isolated island filled with these creatures was actually pretty cool. Sure it's been done, but not with Komodos, a lizard that actually EXISTS, and is well capable of tearing a human apart in a few seconds with blinding speed and toxic saliva so poisenous your almost better off dying right away! There were loads of ways to make this a good, scary and exciting film, but instead we get a whole load of pointless character back-story, drawn out TV dialogue, and snooze inducing "action" scenes that look like and episode of ReBoot with guest star Steve Irwin. We were not even 15 minutes into the film when my normally reluctant to cast judgement until the credits roll girlfriend screamed "ENOUGH OF THE DRAMA ALREADY" as sappy music and tearful confrontations popped up more often than the titular beasts.

Komodo comes with a host of extras from audio-commentary to filmographies and documentaries, but none of this should matter as the only thing you need to know about this disc is that it should be set aflame the moment you see it.

Komodo is to horror cinema what Judas was to Jesus.