Savage Creatures

While Rose is cutting into a deceased off-world visitor to try to understand their weakness, Ursula is repulsed. Rose tells her to go stand in the opposite corner of the room then. This isn’t played as irritation on either of their parts, so the audience readily invests that these two partners, while snippy at times, are right for each other. These small moments make the protagonists very relatable, and the excellent chemistry between Steadman and Brown makes it all the more realistic.

But, some negative elements crop up in Savage Creatures. Every few scenes, the lip-synching fails. I am not sure if these sequences need to be ADR’d or what happened, but every once in a while, the dialogue is half a second behind the mouth movements. This does not add an unintended cheese level, a la a Show era Kaiju flick, but proves very distracting. But because it does not happen all the time, it is so much more noticeable and strange.

Plus, the zombie make-up is not very good. While the undead brain-eaters add a sense of urgency and fun, visually, they aren’t that impressive. It’s just some base white make-up on the respective actors’ faces with some blood splatter here or there. It brings down the potential creep factor down considerably.

“…does not let the audience catch their breath once the action begins…”

What is even worse is that the aliens look fantastic. The CGI ships, while obviously a special effect, are very cool from a design standpoint. Looking like bone, with a sort of ribcage jutting on either side, it reminds one of the living ship Moya, from the show Farscape, if David Cronenberg had created it. Which is awesome as far as I am concerned.

The aliens also look great. Clearly inspired by facehuggers, they still look neat, and the mix of practical and CGI works well. The discovery that their brain and heart are one and the same is fun. All of this makes the bland zombie make-up all the more annoying.

Savage Creatures is ludicrous, silly, and tons of fun. Richard Lowry brings a lot of energy and zeal to the premise, and all the actors ham it up wonderfully. However, the zombies are disappointing, and there a few scenes where the dialogue does not match the lip movements. While those elements prevent it from being a perfect sit, for those who love the golden age of sci-fi b-movies, this is an excellent modern interpretation.