Tasmanian Devils

source: Tasmanian Devils

Some young(-ish) explorer types fall foul of vicious creatures in Tasmania and are forest rangers are on hand as additional monster bait. Lets put to one side the fact that, apart from the name (and pretending to be in Tasmania), this film has nothing to do with Australia's neighbouring island, nor the wildlife which one would expect to encounter on it. A cast of unknowns compete not to be chewed and generally mangled by some CGI critters. There are assorted gory physical effects, some of which are well done. There are CGI monsters which vary from very well done to execrable. The camera work is steady. But I don't think I would recommend this.

A group of adventurers land their helicopter in the mountains of Australia. They are going to parachute off really big, high cliffs. Unfortunately, the first one to jump doesn't pull his chute on time and suffers a terrible fall. Incredibly, he survives the fall - which doesn't seem physically possible, considering the extent of his puncture wound. Things get worse for Olympic champion Apolo Ohno (appropriately named Stone) because his sky-dive releases the titular "Tasmanian Devils". Naturally, the animated monsters want to kill everyone in camera sight. The movie's greatest visual is park ranger Danica McKellar (as Alex). She is presented in a tight uniform that accentuates her prominent front... One interesting little moment in Brook Durham's script occurs when Ms. McKellar notes her character has a man's name ("Alex") while leading man Kenneth Mitchell plays the male character "Jayne" - spelled just like a girl. This starts out like it might be an interesting relationship, but it's really ordinary. The couple does get good interesting support from Mike Dopud (as Anderson) and a trio of food suppliers for the Tasmanian devils. The creatures are not very scary or believable, but the effects team makes up for it with some well-stage gore scenes. **** Tasmanian Devils (1/19/13) Zach Lipovsky ~ Danica McKellar, Kenneth Mitchell, Mike Dopud, Terry Chen

6 base jumpers (5 guys and only 1 girl) fly in a chopper to some forbidden area in Tasmania. Once they arrive, the first goof jumps, waits to long to open his chute ends up crashing through trees, falls through the ground, and gets impaled on a pointy rock. His blood flows through some channels and starts bubbling. Now something awakens in the cave. Eventually some of the others make it down there but they hear something and run away. Meanwhile the park rangers are looking for them. They find them as they run and arrest them. There are three ranchers, 2 guys and a girl who knows about aboriginal mythology. When she hears their story she has an inkling of what is going on. The ranchers check out the cave and find that what the others are saying is true. As they all drive back to the station, they are attacked by something with a glowing red mouth. Two of the ranger are caught. The rest escape after getting a closeup look of what they're facing. From the ranger girl we learn that the things are ancestors of the Tasmanian Devil that were said to eat humans whole. But these things don't have hair but more of a dinosaur stone-like appearance. They scream like Tassies, have a glowing red mouth, and are attracted to noise. One guy who is gung-ho and another guy try to run to the helicopter to rescue the others but things don't turn out well. Next they try to trap the devils in a cave. That doesn't work either. By now most of the bunch are dead and the remaining ones will give it one last shot. It's not a bad idea to make a horror movie about Tasmanian Devils. This one is your usual Syfy fare--on a low budget, filmed in Canada, and with lousy effects. Initially effects seem promising. During the night chase sequence, the creature looks well-done, but once things shift to day the creatures look like 80s CGI effect. The story is alright for what it is, the cast is OK, although it could have used some more females. I'm not sure who exactly the audience is supposed to be for these movies but perhaps they would like it, otherwise there's not much here that stands out.

I honestly don't know why I keep taking chances on movies made for the SyFy network. Well, sometimes I am in the mood for low budget horror, but I've seen plenty of low budget horror movies that were a lot more engaging than "Tasmanian Devils". The fact this was a Canadian production just makes things worse, not limited to the fact that they try to pass off the British Columbian wilderness as the wilderness found in Tasmania. Even though I've never been to Tasmania, I know the backdrop of the movie was just plain WRONG. I might have been able to excuse that had the rest of the movie been engaging, but it isn't. The story and characters you have seen in plenty of other movies before, and you'll be able to predict much of what happens before it does. The idea of (mutant) Tasmanian devils being the monster did have promise, but they are rendered by very unsatisfying CGI. In short, the only audience that there could be for this movie would be for people who have never seen another movie in their life, so they wouldn't be able to compare it to other (and better) movies.

Tasmanian Devils (2013) ** (out of 4) A new year brings us new monster flicks from SyFy. Oh yeah. A group of base jumpers head to an off limits location when one of them is killed and his blood awakens the deadly title creature. Soon the base jumpers as well as a forest cop (Danica McKellar) are trying to figure out a way to kill the ancient beasts. TASMANIAN DEVILS is actually a pretty decent monster movie but about the half-way point it crashes into a wall and simply runs out of gas for the finale. I will admit that for the first fifty-minutes or so that I thought the film was a lot of fun. This is due in large part to the creatures, which obviously look fake but I still liked how they actually looked. I guess if the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were made into a horror movies and ran on four legs then they'd look something like the monsters here. Their ugly little faces were actually a good look for a monster and they certainly help carry the picture. There's also quite a bit of gore for fans of the red stuff, although the first death is one of the most memorable in horror history simply because you're asking yourself how the hell this person is still alive after what originally happens to him. Even the performances are better than you'd typically get from a film like this with McKellar keeping one's interest throughout. The biggest problem is that there's really not much interest in the characters and in the second half of the film we spend a lot more time with them and they're just not really interesting. Still, fans of this type of movies know there's much worse out there.

This movie had some good points: Good gore, Reasonably entertaining idea, Mostly good acting, Good casting of known actors. That being said, the acting was pretty bad even from the actors who've done better acting. Namely Roger Cross' acting in this was overblown and terrible... Mike Dopud and Kenneth Mitchell were the standouts in this film. Terry Chen and Rekha Sharma were decent in the roles they were given. I've seen better acting from Danica McKellar in other movies, and she was mostly good in this but had some moments of badly delivered dialog. But, on the plus sign she spent the latter half of the movie in a white t-shirt. The one-off Aussie actors were terrible. All in all, if you like the actors in this movie and want to waste two hours you'll never get back on a Bad B-Movie then give this one ONE viewing ONLY. You'll regret if you revisit it a second time, probably.

"Tasmanian Devils" does not refer to the beloved Looney Tunes character, the Tasmanian "Taz" Devil. 2012's "Tasmanian Devils" refers to the much-feared carnivorous marsupial that's native to Australia. In typical SyFy Channel fashion, while the Tasmanian Devil has rightfully earned a fearsome reputation amongst humans, this original (and I use this term very loosely) SyFy Channel story here has it that long ago, at least according to some Australian folklore, an especially feral, abnormally large, and bloodthirsty breed of the animals was said to roam the forests of Tasmania to pick off invaders - in other words, us. Through some rather ludicrous plot machinations, this previously unknown/undiscovered, crudely CGI-animated (and slightly reptilian-looking) breed of Tasmanian Devil is let loose upon the Australian backwoods, with American college student/park ranger Alex (Danica McKellar, from "The Wonder Years" TV series) leading a group of American base-jumpers - their fearless team leader and helicopter pilot Anderson (Mike Dopud), Anderson's unfortunately-named protégé Jayne (Kenneth Mitchell), Simon (Roger R. Cross), and newly engaged couple E.R. nurse Lisbon (Rekha Sharma) and NYC cop Walsh (Terry Chen) - to safety. I really had nothing better to do tonight than to watch "Tasmanian Devils"; yes, it's one of those kinds of nights when you're just flipping through the TV channels and some cheap-looking monster movie somehow or another manages to catch your attention for two hours. Some of the monster kills here are especially gruesome, too, and will no doubt please people who love outrageous, realistic-looking gore effects. And the performances are actually semi-decent (considering the source material here). The movie is rather typical SyFy Channel fanfare, as I made explicitly clear earlier. What I found most appealing (and mildly redeeming) about this creature feature, is that the characters in this movie are not ALL monster food. What I meant by that claim is that, all of the individual characters are made useful in some way for the continued survival of the entire group: They each possess some skill that becomes essential for everyone else to live just a little bit longer. For example, Walsh, a cop, remember, is able to rig up a makeshift flamethrower using ONLY jeep engine parts and a tank of gas (which he obtained from detailed schematics from a kid he once busted, and thus gives McKellar's Alex character a full-blown "Ripley" moment halfway through the picture). Another example has Anderson using his penchant for improvisation to devise new, albeit unintended, uses for everyday items and equipment. So I guess that while this film's tried & true plot is not nearly as creative, it is also a given that its characters are a lot smarter than any character I've seen in a SyFy "original" yet. I guess they're just more determined to survive. I can credit director Zack Lipovsky and screenwriter Brook Durham for injecting a little bit more brains into the proceedings than we're used to from these types of SyFy films. Like last year's "Jersey Shore Shark Attack" (2012), another worthy guilty pleasure may be in the winds for "Tasmanian Devils." 6/10

If you are going to have Aussie accents in a movie...use Aussie actors. These were the worst fake Aussie accents I've heard in awhile. The movie was pretty rubbish as well. Poor movie plot. Its supposed to be ScFi horror. Not sure when the SciFi comes in......And what's with that weird 'Tasmanian devil' ... Obviously a VERY low budget movie as the 'special effect' leave you wanting .... wanting for the movie to improve I've yet to see park workers dressed so prettily .... And lets not mention the automatic pistols.... not standard issue to park workers I'm pretty sure. Joke all round really I wish you could give minus stars My vote ... Don't waste your time watching it -2 stars

This has got to be one of the singularly worst movies ever made - non-Tasmanian mountains, non Tasmanian trees, non Australian helicopter registration, bad accents, in the first few minutes, someone is waving around a wad of US Currency, to "bribe" their way in - double whammy - Tasmanian PArk Rangers would never take bribes, and US dollars are next to useless in Tasmania. At the end, they climb into an observation tower - they don't exist in Tasmania. all accommodations are at ground level. There appear to be electric lights in said building, but they don't work, except when the structure is falling, they are throwing sparks. As for firearms - if a ranger was armed it would be with a rifle, never with a sidearm. ANd, of course, Tasmanian devils do exist, but they aren't like the ones in the cartoons - they are the size of a small dog - about 8kg maximum. THe writer/director shouldn't give up their day jobs, if this is the best that they can do. THy would have been better doing a Bigfoot near Vancouver story...