I know first hand that making a movie is an incredibly difficult and complex process. It amazes me how many movies actually get made and released considering how ridiculously hard it is to attempt to manage all of the divergent aspects of filmmaking and find some way to bring a project to the finish line. So with this flick ‘Shadow Walkers’ I’m in a bit of a dilemma. You see I happen to know one of the producers of this particular DTV survival horror flick. Not only do I know the man but he is the executive in charge of the television network that my television show ‘Totally Twisted Flix’ appears on. So if this flick does suck, do I tell the truth and trash this wonderful man’s movie, a man who may be directly responsible for the direction of my future, a future that ain’t all that bright to begin with, or do I fudge around a bit and say how spectacular this film is, even though it may not be, just to try and salvage the few crumbs that are left of my miserable life? Come on now, I like being miserable. Makes a man feel ALIVE!

Our film opens with bunch of commandos busting into a joint and mowing down flashlight toting security guards. Y’all probably could have just asked them to leave, I’m thinking they would have complied. A containment barrier is soon broken and a creature is on the loose taking out folks in white lab coats with extreme prejudice. Except Emily (Rebecca Gibel). I’m watching this with my brother and the monsters are just killing up folks like crazy. Then we see Emily with her traffic stopping figure and inappropriate style of dress and a tear falls from my brother’s eye, as he whimpered ‘please don’t kill her…’ I patted him on the shoulder and told him not worry as her lab coat isn’t cut that low and her skirt isn’t that inappropriately short just so we could lose her in the first five minutes. She may die, but we will get to enjoy her for a while longer bro. This made him happy. Especially as we witnessed far less attractive, much more appropriately dressed females getting mercilessly slaughtered. Anyway,

 the commandos then gas the place, knocking out whoever was left in this warehouse looking place, and when these people wake up they are a bit foggy as to who they are. Except for asshole Clay (Clay Adams) who for some reason didn’t lose his memory which was quite convenient because he told everybody who they were and what they did.

So trying to survive this nightmare and make it out alive are ovulating scientist and assumed Final Girl Julie (Jennifer Summers), her ex-husband and lone kung-fu kicking commando of the bunch Reeve (Jason Coviello), Genetic scientist Pierson (Joseph McCambridge), Leiko (Courtni Mullin), the afore mentioned Clay and the overly developed hottie Emily. Seems the Gub-Ment has been fooling around with genetics to make some kind of Super Soldier, you know how they do, but it’s gone all to hell and now the problem has to be ‘fixed’, which usually equates into killing everybody who knew about the project. So the task for our group of survivors is a daunting one. Make it out of the facility without the government knowing, while trying to avoid this throng of violent super flesh eating zombies who are tracking our crew via our ovulating scientist, and also battle one of our own who isn’t looking at the ‘big picture’ of getting out this joint alive. Dude is still trying further his career. Gotta love that kind ambition, especially given the situation at hand.

As I have often said the first and foremost goal of any film is to entertain. In a sense, ‘No Country for old Men’, despite how great was, was such a downer and so depressing that it really wasn’t all that entertaining. But ‘Shadow Walkers’ did manage to entertain. Now am I saying that ‘Shadow Walkers’ is better than ‘No Country for Old Men’? Of course I’m not. I’m not even saying that ‘Shadow Walkers’ was a good movie, because it wasn’t even close to being good, but I didn’t hate myself after watching it, say like I felt after watching ‘Basic Instinct 2’.

Obviously the Resident Evil-esque story line isn’t terribly unique as we are dealing with some uber corporation or government creating zombies and trying to cover it up. We even have a genetically enhanced Alice type character who settles into kicking some zombie ass. The acting was fairly suspect for the most part but director Mark Steven Groves does pace his film decent enough. though there were some lulls here and there which probably could have used some time compression to speed things up a bit. It’s not like the filmmakers didn’t give it maximum effort though as there were fight scenes, neck chomping, eye gouging, limb ripping, head snatching and even a completely gratuitous nude scene. Yay gratuitous nudity! Also the location that the filmmakers used made for a great atmosphere and added to the overall sense of desperation. Despite all of this good stuff that they tried to put in, ‘Shadow Walkers’ was ultimately undone by it’s relatively poor acting somewhat slowed pace.

But there was enough to entertain, at least entertain me. I’m not trying to tell that this is any good just that there’s worse out there than this. Yeah, the statement ‘Shadow Walkers; there’s worse out there’ may not be a ringing endorsement, but it is a true one. And I will always tell you the truth as I see it.