Bog Creatures requires a lot more patience than someone who’s sitting down to watch a movie called Bog Creatures might have. Debbie Rochon, the top scream queen of the 2000s and the only one here who can really act, doesn’t show up until halfway through the movie. Neither do the Bog Creatures, come to think of it. Director J. Christian Ingvordsen holds back on ’em, like he’s making Jaws or something. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but this film could use a big-time shot in the arm during its forty-odd minutes of bickering college-age kids. Only a few moments of limp sex comedy help ease the pain.
What saves this film from being otherwise completely colorless is that it does that weird thing that I like when a low-low-low-budget B-movie does something ambitious for no reason. This story of swamp things on the rampage was shot in the woods of upstate New York and they could have easily set this in upstate New York, but NOPE. Instead, it’s set in Denmark! (If a movie never leaves the woods, it can be set anyplace where they have trees, I guess. Works for me.) That’s where a rogue American scientist has figured out that conditions are perfect for corpses from hundreds of ago to be preserved, rotten but intact, in the mud. So, he hires a bunch of kids who didn’t make the cut for MTV’s Real World to go to Europe with some shovels and start digging. Next thing you know (or about an hour into the movie), all hell breaks loose. The bodies are from a massacred village from medieval times and the reason why they wake up is because of the usual black magic stuff. This is all laid out in the opening scene, which is also where you’ll find 75% of the production values, 80% of the violence and 100% of the nudity.
Eh, see it for Debbie and keep your expectations low.