Dagon (2001)

As I've made perfectly clear in the past, I'm not a big horror fan. I've always thought it was because most horror films tend to spare money on the story and spend it all on the special effects, but after the past few months of watching numerous B-movies, which have even less of a story and special effects, I realize that's not the reason horror films don't agree with me. Actually I find most horror films quite entertaining to a point, and that point is usually the final act where all caution is thrown into the wind.

Recently scanning through the world wide web of movie blogs I stumbled upon a review of Dagon and the film looked fairly interesting. Upon viewing the trailer was even a little excited, maybe I've truly found one of the few horror films that I'll actually love! Well that love was more of a one night stand, as Dagon arrived from Netflix and quickly received my full attention. Th film follows a young couple, Paul and Bárbara, who have been shipwrecked off the coast of a small Spanish village. Arriving to the village in hope of seeking help they quickly discover the oddity of the townsfolk, maybe it was the overly pale skin, the webbed hands, or possibly the gills on their neck's, but whatever it was they knew something was not right. Surprisingly the townsfolk weren't all that friendly either, quickly capturing Bárbara and leaving the very whimpy Paul to fend for himself.

Narrowly escaping death from a mob of mutants on several occassions Paul stumbles across an old man who is seemingly insane. The old man recites a story of many decades ago when the town began to turn to the idol worship of a sea creature known as Dagon, that was the official beginning of the end as the townspeople began to transform into horrendous sea creatures. Continuing his search for a way out of the town, Paul only finds himself deeper into the Dagon cult, and discovers a shocking secret about himself.

For the first half of the film Dagon was quite entertaining with a creepy town setting and realistic looking, acting and sounding mutants, but a little more than half way through is when the story begins to take a strange twist. It's at this point Dagon starts to go downhill for me, turning a good monster film into some sort of Sci-Fi Channel original. I went from the typical yelling at the characters on the screen to "hurry it up", and "don't go in there" to a rather confused "what?". For some people, and definitely for fans of the bizarre H.P. Lovecraft, this film will be a favorite, but for me I enjoy my horror consistent with the occasional twist not straying so far off the original course of the film that is almost pollutes it.

Also the main character, Paul, is a little beyond unrealistic. He's a complete nerd in a romantic relationship with a girl who could be a Spanish supermodel? Not only is she out of his league but she has more guts and balls than he does, saving his butt on a couple occassions, yet he's able to hold his own against a town full of fish mutants? And finally the real killer in horror films for me seems to be flow. It's amazing how 90 minutes in one film can fly by, yet 90 minutes in another can seem like forever. Dagon seemed like forever. Maybe it's due to the fact that a majority of the film surrounds Paul running in and out of the hands of the mutants, but I've experienced this flow issue far too often with the horror genre, and a lot of the times it's the real killer in the film.

6/10