Blood Lake: Attack of the Killer Lampreys (2014)

Boring

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

BLOOD LAKE: ATTACK OF THE KILLER LAMPREYS is the latest monster movie from those schlock purveyors at The Asylum. It's as cheesy as it sounds, but somehow also quite nifty for an Asylum film and certainly nowhere near as bad as I'd feared. It comes across as a rip-off of PIRANHA 3D in its depiction of a multitude of underwater menaces and even features Christopher Lloyd to hammer home the similarities.The story is simplistic and barely worth recounting. A local water supply is contaminated by lampreys with a taste for human flesh and various authority figures have to combat the menace. I like the underwater nature of these monster flicks as you get all the scenes of swimming pools and showers being invaded by the creatures as well as the local lake. Plus, the CGI isn't too bad here. It's no better than in a giant monster film but the fact that the creatures are small just makes them look more realistic.Shannen Doherty is the big name here, but she's clearly past it and looking embarrassed by the whole thing. The rest of the cast are as wooden as they come, aside from the hammy Lloyd. It's a predictable, action-focused romp that nevertheless offers plenty of creature action and death and destruction, and it's also a notably gruesome offering with blood everywhere. It doesn't take much for a monster flick to entertain me and BLOOD LAKE just about gets by in this respect.

In this movie, killer eels go through the plumbing, slither up Christopher Lloyd's butt, then pop out his mouth.That's horrifying on oh, so many levels that have nothing to do with this being an effective horror picture, which it is not.That the famously reclusive character actor apparently needed the dough so badly that he'd add this call-in DTV role to his Reverend Jim / Doc Brown / Uncle Fester repertoire is sad enough. That he shakes and gesticulates in every of his few scenes like he's got the delirium tremens makes me worry for his sobriety.But when the scariest thing in your horror movie is Shannen Doherty's face -- most specifically her Botox-frozen lips and cig-poisoned skin pallor -- you're gonna want to use your digital effects to make your lead actress look at least a bit less revolting than your vampire water snakes.You didn't here. Ugh. Not ugh blood-sucking eels. Ugh Shannen Doherty.Nobody dies spectacularly; none of the hot girls take their clothes off; the ending's a letdown. The Asylum, ladies and gentlemen.Netflix "Night of the Creeps" or "Slither" instead for a movie that takes awesomely better advantage of its similarly dumb premise.

As awful as Blood Lake: Attack of the Killer Lampreys is, I didn't think it was entirely without redeeming values. Christopher Lloyd(often has been one of the better aspects of bad movies, and he's had a fair share of those) is immensely fun to watch, Ciara Hanna is very sassy and actually seems to give a toss about the situation and there are some nicely composed shots here and there. However, the CGI effects are suspect at best and for me the lampreys weren't enough of a threat, we learn absolutely nothing about them, where they come from and why they're attacking and their attacks are not well executed at all. Instead they are very repetitive and come across as silly and lacking in variety, relying on silliness and excessive gore rather than genuine tension and suspense. The most inventive the attacks get is that facial expression freeze frame when one gets impaled, which did raise a good laugh. The music could and should have been used much less and plays too much of an over-dramatic dirge. The script is very flimsy, it's corny and underwritten and never allows us to identify with the characters or care about the situation. Suspense levels are next to non-existent, the movie is often too stupid and repetitive to be fun and there are exposition and melodrama parts that really plod and come across as ham-fisted. The story is very erratically paced, mostly on the dull end when ranked on the pacing spectrum, with absolutely no surprises, while not one single character is likable. Apart from Lloyd and Hanna, the acting- from people who have actually shown some degree of acting talent- is not very good. Most of them seemed oblivious to their situation and come across as annoying and charisma-free. Shannen Doherty also looks tired and acts it too. Overall, apart from a few shots, Lloyd and Hanna(and to some extent the freeze frame) Blod Lake: Attack of the Killer Lampreys is a mess. 2/10 Bethany Cox

After a strange series of deaths around a small Michigan lake, the discovery of the culprit being mutated lamprey fish forces the animal control agents to take action against the creatures and the mayor who doesn't want the information getting out.This turned out to be quite surprisingly enjoyable creature feature that has quite a bit going for it. One of the biggest pluses here is the fact that the creatures are a threat from the very beginning, with the actual attempts to coral the creatures constituting the opening moments which brings up the fact that this was an ongoing problem before we joined the story and makes for a nice change-of-pace over the usual cliché of them springing up out of nowhere and forcing the characters to deal with a suddenly-emerged threat. Here, the fact that this has been going on for awhile and there's a time limit to keep makes for a nice bit of suspense in the first half as well as the rather impressive amount of kills this one dishes out. Since the creatures are known for awhile yet their actual danger is still very much a mystery yet the creatures are loose, there's a lot of fun to be had with the multitude of amazing swarming and attack scenes here as the various creatures emerge from out of nowhere and becomes quite cheesy with the CGI creatures getting on the attack. While this in effect does give the film a lot of rather fun action scenes, especially in the later half with the house sequence coming up from every hole and drain as the continually-growing number descended upon the victims or the absolutely enjoyable and cheesy assault in the lake that manages to become far more entertaining as it goes along with the swarming creatures and disassembled bodies, the fact that the CGI done for the creatures still looks terrible is a major hurdle to overcome. Even when they're quite decent-looking, they're out-of-scale to the scene and rarely interact well with the matching plate for the human action, which really hampers it somewhat. The last thing bugging this one is the reliance on clichés to deliver the goods, for there's the reluctant mayor more obsessed with the money-making events in town than keeping people from being injured, the scientist who knows more than he's letting on despite being willing to help with the containment efforts and the family drama about just moving to the suburb away from everyone that gets old quite fast. Otherwise, there's a lot to like in this one.Rated Unrated/R: Violence and Language.