Carny

Carny (2009)

When a carnival shows up to entertain the locals of a small town the sheriff, played by Lou Diamond Phillips, gets a bit concerned over the main attraction. Billed as the devil himself it is a nasty looking creature, that of course is bloodthirsty and gets loose to tear up everyone in site. Most of the movie is spent with the sheriff trying to find and kill the creature, and the carnival owner and his lackey trying to recapture their “license to print money”. Toss in a local preacher who loses his son and then his mind and you have the makings of a typical creature gone amok flick.

And I have to say while not the greatest movie that I’ve ever seen Carny does a decent job scratching that creature feature “itch”. And while the movie isn’t terribly original lifting the monster from the Jersey Devil legend and using all too familiar lines like, “If it bleeds we can kill it.” it is still a good time. The movie is paced well and lacks that slow spot that so many of the other Sci-Fi channel movies suffer from. This movie knows exactly what it has to do. It gives us the monster, sets up some victims, and gets to the killing right away. As a fan of monster movies I can appreciate that and have fun with it. The creative people involved here know what they are making and follow the formula all the way to the end. Though I will say the ending is a bit awkward and seems to have been beyond their budget. But that doesn’t take away from me enjoying the movie.

The thing that impressed me most about Carny was the inclusion of practical effects. The design of some of the performers of the Freak Show were killer, including the split faced man. And while there is some CGI used for the Jersey Devil creature as it flies around they also have a nice looking puppet for the cast to interact with on set. So many of these low budget creature features rely on a complete CGI creation that it was nice to see some practical effects for a change.

I’m always afraid when I review a movie like Carny that I’m creating expectations that are too high. The key here is that everyone understands that I’m a big fan of these cheesy Sci-Fi channel creature features. They remind me of the goofy rubber suit monster movies that I grew up watching as a kid. So I’m inclined to enjoy a movie like this. So if you can turn the critical part of your brain off and kick back for some goofy fun Carny is worth checking out at least once.

2 ½ out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer