Shocker (1989)

Director: Wes Craven

Starring: Michael Murphy, Mitch Pileggi, John Tesh

After being sent to the electric chair, a serial killer uses electricity to come back from the dead and carry out his vengeance on the football player who turned him in to the police.

During the first half of the film, I thought to myself “How did I ever miss this one?” During the second half, I thought to myself “Oh, what the hell have they done??”

The first half had the ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ feel to it, and a lot of the effects were similar to Elm Street’s. Well into the first half it felt like ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ meets ‘Prison’ (1987). The visual effects were great (and practical), the story was great, the acting was convincing, and Mitch Pileggi was excellent as antagonist Horace Pinker. He was pure evil personified. The film seemed to have the potential to become a franchise.

However, everything quickly went very wrong during the second half of the film. The moment Pinker started jumping from body to body, I started to loose interest and the idea didn’t feel that fresh anymore. From there it spiraled into absurdity. The effects were not that good anymore, the story became preposterous, it became comedic, and nothing was serious anymore. How on earth did they manage to mess up a potentially brilliant movie so badly? Its as if Wes Craven had a great initial idea, but didn’t know how to finish it. The last 40 minutes or so felt like they desperately tried to make up screen time by adding trivial shot after ridiculous shot, and it became one big mess. What a pity…

Ah well, I absolutely loved the soundtrack, at least.