Skinwalkers

[phantomstranger]

12:00 AM, 06-JULY-07
Skinwalkers Updates Werewolves
Director James Isaac told SCI FI Wire that his upcoming horror movie, Skinwalkers, puts a new spin on the old werewolf movie genre. The film, which depicts a civil war between werewolves called Skinwalkers, stars an ensemble of familiar genre names, including Jason Behr (The Grudge), Elias Koteas (Lost Souls), Rhona Mitra (The Number 23), Kim Coates (Silent Hill), Natassia Malthe (Elektra) and Sarah Carter (TV's Smallville).

"There are two kinds of Skinwalkers," Isaac said in an interview. "There are the ones who don't want to embrace the beast and just want to lead a normal life like everybody else. They just want to live a normal life and not have ... what they'd consider a curse or this illness. The other Skinwalkers, who do embrace it, don't want this curse to end. So that's the conflict, and they're at war constantly."

Complicating matters is a 12-year-old boy, Timothy (Matthew Knight), who will gain the power to alter the curse when he celebrates his 13th birthday, reaching the long-prophesied time of transformation. That day is heralded by a red moon.

"So, of course, the Skinwalkers who don't want the curse to end are hunting down the child, and the other Skinwalkers are trying to protect him," Isaac said. "It turns out the Skinwalkers are connected in the story, and it's family against family and brother [Behr] against brother [Koteas], which is very interesting."

Skinwalkers marks Isaac's third film as a director, following The Horror Show and Jason X. Before he began directing, he was part of the visual-effects and creature crews on such films as The Fly, eXistenZ, Return of the Jedi and Gremlins. As a result of those experiences, Isaac said, he relied more on practical effects than computer-generated images when making Skinwalkers.

"My background is mixed, but the foundation of my creature work was very practical, whether it was animatronic work or makeup effects, like we did on The Fly," Isaac said. "I really felt this script, because it has such an organic texture about it in tone, required as many practical effects as possible. The story is not all done at night or all done in scary, dark corners. Some of it is during the day. Some of it is at night. It's indoors and outdoors. I loved all of that, but what's consistent is it's got this very real and organic texture.

Isaac added: "So, the creatures, when we finally see the beast come out, of course we wanted the coolest beasts ever. I wanted them to be prosthetic, to be full-on makeup prosthetics. They had to be a blend of human to beast, and I needed to see the souls of these people who are turning into beasts, and the only way to do that is to have the actors be in these suits and prosthetics." Skinwalkers opens on July 27. —Ian Spelling

[BLOODLORD]

There's nothing like a good Werewolf Flick in my book. too bad it's pg-13.