CHUPACABRA VS. THE ALAMO (2013)
Tagline: Mythical monsters force new last stand at the Old Alamo.
(Action, Fantasy, Okay Mrs. Ph.D., Impress Me) [PG-13]
Note: This movie was not given an MPAA rating, but it likely would have landed a PG-13 due to violence.
We’ve got Chupacabras off up in here…
In this one DEA agent Carlos Seguin is investigating murders with Tracy Taylor and Agent Dani when it becomes clear that they are dealing with animal attacks that do not fit any predators in the area around San Antonio, Texas. Outnumbered, and overrun, a group of survivors including Carlos’s son have to take their last stand at the Alamo.
One thing I have to say to start this thing off is that this movie could have been a lot better if they had just worked with real dogs. Bad CGI can always mess up a movie, but it gets compounded when it’s used in areas where it was totally unnecessary. Simply throwing well-designed masks on these dogs and using minimal CGI would have done the trick. I get that it involves using trainers and all that, but common. Sadly this thing has several spots where totally unnecessary CGI is used.
What I liked about this movie was the creative kills, one of which included a standard iron. It was also pretty cool that we got a lot of chupacabras rather than just one. If you are not going to give them superpowers or make them actually bulletproof, you might as well have a lot of them. I also think the pacing was pretty good. I have seen some reviews ripping the dialog, but I thought it was fine. Some of the banter between the characters is actually pretty fantastic. We do also get some real-looking explosions and fire in this so that already makes it better than a lot of the B-movies that didn’t even bother doing that. Of course, there are a few suspect-looking explosions as well.
Acting wise it’s always fun to see Erik Estrada in something and there is no shortage of offerings with him in them. He has been in over 165 projects with 6 on the way. He is still mostly known for the TV show CHiPs, but he’s done a wide variety of stuff and his performance in this is more than adequate. Julia Benson takes the role of Tracy Taylor in this and is solid as usual. She is best known for the Stargate Universe TV series. Everyone else is either mediocre or forgettable in this. If I had to pick one other standout it would have been Nicole Muñoz, but she is given too little screen time to really shine.
When it comes to the bad things about this film, I was pretty disappointed with how bogged down the movie got in the last 20 minutes or so. You would think this would be a big climax, but it came across as just very “meh”. The score is very solid in some areas then just kind of falls apart in the last act like the rest of the movie. The story gets away from being creative and fun and turns into a tedious hide and seek in the dark flick and I just felt like there was something better they could have done with this. I also feel like if this really happened everyone in the final act of this thing would have been arrested.
Having said all that, I didn’t watch this movie expecting realism and it is actually pretty fun for most of its runtime. If you watch a lot of B-movies you know not to get your hopes up here. I have to give this one a 3 out of 7. It’s better than “barely watchable” but let’s not get carried away.
GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF SYFY FILMS PRODUCTIONS AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY.
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