Review – Totem

Okay, now I feel genuinely deceived. I’d be the first to admit that it’s my own damn fault when I rent videos from Full Moon and they end up falling far short of reasonable expectations. However, even at my most gullible I’ve almost always managed to avoid the series of movies the studio did that employ evil toys, puppets and the like as the antagonists. Because the box made this sound like an “evil spirits trying to break free from hell and destroy the earth” plot, I figured it would be a safe rent. I figured wrong. The evil spirits turn out to be three gargoyle-esque things from a stone totem pole. When an obscure system of human sacrifice looses them one by one, they turn out to be two-foot-tall dolls easily as fakey and stupid-looking as even the dumbest demonic toy. As if that wasn’t bad enough, this movie has nearly nothing else going for it. The story starts with six teenagers dropped for no apparent reason into a cabin in the middle of the woods, and it just meanders aimlessly from there. The plot seems to serve as nothing more than an excuse for the shock sequences, which would be okay if the shocks didn’t suck. Overall this struck me as a half-baked knock-off of Evil Dead. Because one can usually find the original on the same shelves where this dog is stocked, there isn’t much reason to rent the cheap imitation. Wish I’d skipped it