Splinter

Released - 2008
Genre - Horror
Director - Toby Wilkins
Starring - Shea Whigham, Paulo Costanzo, Jill Wagner, Charles Baker, Rachel Kerbs

This is tense horror flick about a couple who get pulled over and kidnapped by a criminal on the run and his junkie girlfriend. As the party drive away they hit something and, on closer inspection, find it is an animal infected with some kind of splintering organism. When they stop at a gas station further down the road things take a serious turn for the bizarre and they are forced to hole up inside as the organism hunts them. The dark splinters infect the host and are able to animate them even if they are dead. This is a tightly paced and enjoyable horror film with some gruesome gore and plenty of scares. The effects are well handled, the twisting limbs of people harbouring the parasites are seriously creepy and the director does a good job of building suspense. The survivors make some typically dumb moves but otherwise this is a lot of fun and feels quite fresh and original.

Gore - there are one or two seriously gory sequences but it avoids being gratuitous

Monster - the monster is a parasite which animates host bodies or parts of them, it looks like dark splinters

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