Charisma Carpenter

STUDIO: Anchor Bay
MSRP: $19.98
RATED: NR
RUNNING TIME: 89 minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:
• Black Magic: The Stunts, Make-up and Visual Effects of Voodoo Moon
• You Reap What You Sow: The Making of Voodoo Moon
• Deleted Scenes
• Photo & Still Gallery
• Trailer
• Screenplay on DVD-ROM

The Pitch

Demons aren’t nice people.

The Humans

Eric Mabius, Charisma Carpenter, John Amos, Jeffrey Combs, Dee Wallace, Jayne Heitmeyer

Unfortunately for the Demon, he thought he had it won with Charizard, but Cole pulled put Pikachu and opened up a can o’ whoopass."

The Nutshell

Siblings Cole and Heather (Mabius, Carpenter) are the only survivors of a massacre in a small Tennessee town spurred by a demon named Daniel. Since then, Heather has become a successful artist who has developed the ability to see the future and incorporate it into her art. Meanwhile, Cole has journeyed the earth and studied all religions, including voodoo, learning various powers and developing psychic abilities in an effort to battle Daniel whenever and wherever he reemerges, seeking to sow seeds of death and destruction. Along the way, Cole has helped people to whom Daniel’s path of misery has touched. He gathers them together for a final battle that he and Heather must win in order to stop Daniel’s reign of terror forever.

The Lowdown

The lowdown on Voodoo Moon is that at best it’s a rip-off of good horror fare, and at worst it’s a rip-off of bad horror fare. The director, Keith Van Hook freely admits that he was inspired by stories like The Stand where a group of people come together to fight a common enemy. There’s that element here as Cole and Heather gather a group of people to fight Daniel. The main problem is that this huge event that spurred on the entire story is only referred to only in dialogue when it screams to be seen to set the story up. Plus there are flashbacks as the major characters are introduced that range from disjointed to just plain weak.

"Yeah, so Florida, JJ and my other kids think I’m ’dead’. I gotta tell ya, I found more friggin’ Good Times on the road whorin’, drinkin’ and doin’ drugs than I ever did living the bullshit good Christian ghetto life, that’s for sure..."

All we know of Cole is that he’s a mysterious loner who’s traveled the globe fighting Daniel, who takes many guises (i.e. different actors) and is now back to make one final push for world domination. No explanation is given as to why Daniel is making his big move now, and the stakes are loosely defined at best. And Daniel is a far cry from Randall Flagg, to be certain. As for Cole’s crew, they’re a collection of mostly caricatures, and none more so than John Amos, who usually rules, but here he’s doing his best Fred Williamson impression but not coming anywhere near From Dusk Till Dawn’s Frost. Yet he’s the most memorable of the lot - save Jeffrey Combs, whom we’ll get to in a moment - as the others are a bunch of “red shirts” (that’s Star Trek lingo, folks) who are in the story merely to be eviscerated in some hopefully semi-entertaining manner.

As for Carpenter, she looks as good as ever, going back with the early Cordy look, but her character has about as much depth as a wet pothole. And Cole is a hackneyed mishmash of John Constantine, Eric Draven (ironic considering Mabius was also a Crow and he tries his damnedest to reprise the look here) and Neo, having various powers by studying the faiths of many cultures, but he’s nowhere near as interesting as any of them. Jeffrey Combs also makes an appearance as one of the people that Cole had helped at one time or another, and he’s given the comic relief shtick as Det. Frank Taggert, who is killed by one of Daniel’s minions on the way to helping Cole, but refuses to take death lying down and comes back as a zombie to continue the fight. Problem is is that for comic relief, his considerable talents are totally wasted as he’s given maybe two minutes of total screen time post mortem and can only spout some half-hearted lines that really aren’t very comical, nor relieving to say the least.

As for the story itself, as Van Hook stated, he tried for elements from several stories and didn’t add anything to the groundwork laid by any of them. It barely Stands, doesn’t Blaze much Hell, and can’t find the Serpent for the Rainbow. I actually spent more time playing Six Degrees of Separation with the cast rather than contemplating the story afterwards. Follow me on this: Eric Mabius was a Crow, a franchise for which David Boreanaz was a villain, and of course Boreanaz worked on both Buffy and Angel with Carpenter. Meanwhile, Dee Wallace worked with Jeffrey Combs not only on this movie, but also on The Frighteners, and Combs was a frequent actor on several Star Trek shows, which was created by Gene Roddenberry, who also created Earth: Final Conflict and Andromeda, both of which Jayne Heitmeyer either starred in or guest starred on. Now that’s scarier than anything in this flick.

The Package

Despite all of that, the film actually looks pretty good, although the sound was lacking in places. It has a 10-minute making of featurette, You Reap What You Sow, deleted scenes, director’s commentary, still gallery and talent bios. So there’s everything you ever wanted to know about a mediocre horror film.

5.0 out of 10