Chupa – review

Director: Tom Hoover

Release date: 2000

Contains spoilers

This really is a low budget flick, the Tubi version being of a really low resolution – which I doubt impacted the experience too much. Yet it has a certain something about it and it is great when a low budget flick does that, when a film reaches beyond the sum of its parts. Does it mean it is good… not necessarily so but, in this case at least, it provides a solid entertainment if you know going in what you are going to get.

Of course, by the title you’d guess it was about El Chupacabra and you’d be right, sort of. However, we start with a car. It pulls up near woods and a man Dr Simon Westlake (Jim Lee Johnson) gets out…

Jim Lee Johnson as Westlake

In a house, a dog is interested in what’s occurring outside. The owner (Marci Paolucci) lets her out, the small dog runs out towards the woods and we see her through a red “chupa-vision”. The dog turns tail and runs back in. The owner asks several times what is out there (lady, the dog can’t answer) and then goes out to take a look for herself. She is attacked – though we see little of it, just a pov camera aimed towards her and the scream. Westlake drives away and, for sharp-eyed viewers, his presence does perhaps undermine the central twist later, at least a little.

lecture

We cut to conspiracy-theorist Seth Corralis (Russel Kunz) giving a lecture on El Chupacabra (one telling budget part, or perhaps a deliberate dig, was the fact that Seth’s artist impression slides are the most crudely drawn figures imaginable). After the lecture (having signed a book with the cover ripped off) he is talking about Men In Black to a couple of audience members when he is approached by a man in black and told there is someone wishing to speak to him. Oblivious of the irony (though the audience members are not) he meets a limo outside and is asked to join a taskforce being set up by the FBI to try and document a Chupacabra sighting.

meeting the team

The FBI person in charge, Grier (Dale Franks), has pulled in Marine Cpt. Lawrence (Pete Ferry) to be the field lead. Due to an operational faux pas his career is almost in tatters and he is forced on the mission. In the meeting is Westlake, who works with the FBI. They get to a lodge and we meet the rest of the team – rookie agents Angela (Tiffany Sandels) and Skip (Dan Sekanic), from the military Private Andy Johanson (Connor McGarvey) and not yet arrived (and forced into the team) animal behaviourist Dr Samantha Enright (Mary Mahoney). Also, along is FBI agent Frank Roundtree (Henry C Bishop). Whilst they assemble, we see a ranger (Aurelio Anastasio) killed by the Chupa in another part of the woods.

Jeffrey Lynn Hall as Gabriel

Their orders suggest they must be cut off from the world for the duration – no car keys, no cells phones and any comms/internet through a secure link via Quantico. They do find, later, the reports on the two victims that the coroner (Jack Bennett) has tried to bury and subsequently draft in Assistant coroner Dr Laura Coats (Jo McGarvey). She examined the bodies, which had throats ripped out, the blood gone, three distinct punctures in the torso and their innards liquidised. When Grier is told of this he drafts in a psychic, Gabriel (Jeffrey Lynn Hall), who has worked with the FBI in the past (and who Westlake actively dislikes). However, there is a suspicion that the creature might be too big to be a Chupacabra and they are not known for their attacks on humans…

finally revealed

So, the film has little in the way of budget and so sensibly keeps the creature hidden or just in indistinct flashes for the most part (it certainly does not look like the beast on the movie art). We do, at the end, see it in all its glory and it looks pretty darn naff so the choice was a good one. It also can shapeshift and take the form of humans (there is a conspiracy that it does this by drinking their DNA after liquidising the insides but then we see it in the form of someone still alive, and it can replicate wounds as well as natural features) and this also helps keep effects minimal. Actually, the practical effects for wounds is generally quite good.

chupa-vision

Acting-wise… I think it is best described as earnest. It isn’t winning awards but everyone seems to be giving their all. The story is ok but the narrative construction rambles a bit – the film is 1 hour 48 minutes and it's not that the plot is bloated so much as it takes a bit of a circuitous route and yet, again, it feels very earnest in what it is trying to do. I found myself surprised at the fact that I was not bored and wanted to stay with the film till the end, despite its limitations and that is great – there are plenty of high(er) budget films that don’t achieve that. 5.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK