For those of us that follow this nonsense,
we've known for years that the Sci-Fi channel has been buying
their fair share of Asylum movies to show as their SyFy
original films, but to our sadness, SyFy has all but abandoned
their original film slate in place of bad reality shows and
other junk we don't want to see. So what's a
hardworking, low budget movie studio to do? Animal
Planet? Didn't expect that one. So here we are,
watching 'Blood Lake: Attack of the Killer Lampreys' on Animal
Planet. I guess it makes sense… lampreys are animals and
this movie takes place on a planet… sure, we'll go with
that. The comforting thing is that be it SyFy, Lifetime,
VOD or Animal Planet… it is still an Asylum Movie and it is
still terrible.
Ahhh beautiful Michigan. I'm from Michigan, this ain't
Michigan. Hell if I know where it is. Anyway, some
brother is trying to fix some pipe problem in some lake when a
lamprey jumps on the back of his large bald head and drags him
the water. Dead Black Guy out of the way five minutes
in. That's a relief.
Now we meet our films star, hardworking Parks and Wildlife
employee, on loan to the sewage department, Mike Parker (Jason
Brooks) who knows just about everything possible there is to
know about lamprey. Seriously, if there's a college out
there that offers a PhD in lamprey studies, this cat is the
dean of that department. The Parkers are your
typical horror movie nuclear family that also has doting wife
Cate (Shannen Doherty), disrespectful teenage daughter Nicole
(Ciara Hannah) and Kyle (Yar Koosha), the precocious
adolescent boy.
So the routine goes as you would expect. Mike along with
his tough partner Will (Zack Ward) see there is a lamprey
problem with the lake, Mike thinks the lake should be shut
down, but the scurrilous Mayor (Christopher Lloyd) refuses
because it's going to interfere with some kind of summer fun
event. Local mayors hate anything that stops summer fun
events, even if it means everybody must die… because the fun
must go on.
The problem is that the lamprey problem is
way worse than Mike could've ever imagined. Way
worse. These are special mutated lamprey, hell if we
know how they came to be, not that this is neither here or
there when one is attached to your face, but these things are
off the chain. They can live in your body, they don't
really need water, and they come through pipes and enter your
house though these pipes and the toilet and what not.
There are millions of these things, and quite honestly it
looks like society as we know it is about to end.
Especially if they enter Lake Michigan, even though they are
nowhere near Lake Michigan. Hopefully Mr. Lamprey PhD
over there can figure this out.
Of course 'Blood Lake: Attack of the Killer Lampreys' is
terrible, what else could it be? It's a movie filled
with suspect CGI lamprey, suspect acting, stupid characters,
an erratic pace, and no real resolution to the pressing issue
of Mutated Killer Lamprey. As least as far as I could
tell. But let's work with the baseline that we knew
going in that 'Blood Lake' was going to be terrible, even
though I'm not sure the executives at Animal Planet knew how
terrible it could actually be. I wonder did the
executives at Animal Planet even watch this movie before they
chose to air it? But Anyway, if we work under the
baseline that we knew beforehand that 'Blood Lake' was going
to be terrible, how is it now? It's still terrible of
course! But at least it's a terrible we can work with.
I don't know if you would count this as a positive or a
negative, but 'Blood Lake' is awfully gory. Eyeballs get
eaten, an endless number of bodies get burrowed into in bloody
fashion, lampreys exit mouths aplenty, and I think they even
liquefied a dude. Then, of course, there was the toilet
scene and they didn't even shy away from that. I
wouldn't have minded if they did, but they did not. If
you want to see lamprey do horrible things to people, this
would be your movie. And if you are in a truck and
lamprey are in the street, should one stop? Probably
not. Probably should just drive over them I'm
thinking. And if you do stop, perhaps roll up your
windows? This incredibly stupid character was played the
lovely Rachel True who we were really hoping would survive
this film, much more so than every single member of the Parker
family, all of whom we hated.
The acting really wasn't so bad I guess. Christopher
Lloyd who I don't think I've ever seen in one of these types
of movies, did that thing he does as the mayor, and to great
effect. Shannen D., who I see in movies like this all
the time, seemed to be a little more engaged in this one as
opposed to the last few we saw her in. And Zack Ward,
who I ONLY see in movies like this tends to give Shakespearean
type effort almost all of the time.
But it was still pretty awful. Despite the gore and the
plethora of lamprey slaughter, it all got kind of repetitive
after a while and thus was a little boring, and I'm not
convinced the lamprey elimination plan really worked in the
end. Plus there was the slight issue of the lamprey
eating humans because they ran out of food in the lake, but
what about the cute ducks in the background that constantly
populated the lake? Why didn't the lamprey eat the
ducks? Ducks taste better than humans. And did
they ever stop the lamprey from entering Lake Michigan?
That one I think they succeeded at. Because they are
nowhere near Lake Michigan.
