Tooth and Nail (2007) Reviews

• Not very good.

  hexrei2008-12-10

  I'm astonished that some people are rating this movie a 9 or 10. It really just isn't that good. Sadly, it had all the tools to be successful, including an interesting premise, a wealth of experienced acting talent, a great filming location, and convincing effects (although this being 2008 you can't really give much credit for the latter anymore). Unfortunately, they still managed to screw it up. The villains' actions didn't make much sense, neither did the protagonists', for that matter. They consistently made really stupid decisions, presumably to create tension and a "stalking killers" feel, except the killers weren't scary. The "twist" was predictable and lame. Dialog was passable, but nothing to write home about. I did feel the actors all delivered the best performance they could with what they had, but there just wasn't much to work with. The script really needed a couple of critical rewrites before going into production, I actually laughed out loud at the cliché "dramatic face painting in preparation for war" scene near the end. The ending is frankly boring and unsatisfying. Instead of this movie, you could just watch Mad Max and Doomsday while completely hammered, then take the resulting mess of memories and remove anything entertaining or intriguing, it will be the same experience but far more fun.

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• Disappointing post-apocalyptic horror

  The_Void2008-10-30

  Tooth and Nail is yet another film handling the idea of the majority of the population being killed off and the rest living in a barren wasteland. There are plenty of these films about, and most of them are better than this one as Mark Young's film adds nothing new to the concept and as such is really disappointing. The film does actually benefit from a very well done atmosphere - most of it takes place at night and the director constantly enforces the idea that the central characters are in a hopeless situation. However, the good things about it end there. As mentioned, the film takes place in the future and we focus on a group of people (lead by a college professor) that have holed up in an old abandoned hospital. Of course they plan to rebuild civilisation from the ground up; but their plan hits a stumbling block when they come across another gang of survivors. This gang calls themselves 'The Rovers' and just happen to be cannibals. Naturally, our group find themselves on the menu and have to fight to survive. Mark Young's screenplay is really weak. The characters are all non-entities and many lines of dialogue are awful, which doesn't exactly help. The film does not feature even nearly enough tension or suspense and spends far too much time focusing on bickering within the central group; which is at times painful since none of the lead actors can act. Even when the film does start to feature a bit more action; it's not well filmed or exciting. Most of the cast is made up of unknown performers, but there are three exceptions, in the form of Robert Carradine, Vinnie Jones and Michael Madsen; who have small and rather ineffective roles. There are a few gory scenes in the film, but nothing to write home about. It's really a shame that the film turned out like this as while there are a lot of post-apocalyptic films about; this type of film can be really well done if handled correctly. The ending is fairly good and the little twist at the end is nice; but overall this is not good horror and represents yet another underwhelming entry in Afterdark's '8 Films to Die For' collection.

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• Children of the Dark

  claudio_carvalho2010-06-21

  When the world ran out gas, sooner the reserves of supply finished; without power to move machines, preserve and transport food and control the environment, came chaos and anarchy. In the post-apocalyptic Philadelphia, nine survivors led by Professor Darwin (Robert Carradine) live in an abandoned hospital sharing their supplies. When they find a young woman being attacked, they rescue her and bring her to their community. She introduces herself as Neon (Rachel Miner) and is welcomed by Darwin. But sooner they are attacked by violent strangers named Rovers; Darwin vanishes and Neon explains that they are cannibals. The survivors split and during the night, they have to fight to survive. "Tooth & Nail" is a dark movie about a post-apocalyptic society where the stronger survive. The forgettable story is violent and entertains. My vote is five. Title (Brazil): "Os Encurralados" ("The Trapped Ones")

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• Just disappointing... (contains spoiler)

  jltrail2008-01-16

  Going into Tooth and Nail, I was excited, Horrorfest is an opportunity to get away from the typical Hollywood narratives and enjoy some good old fashioned gore, and I have to say I was impressed with the first half of the film. It addresses a topic that is still untouched, in horror films at least, and is able to play off of human nature quite well. While the acting left something to be desired and the opening monologue made me want to scream, I was intrigued by the story and willing to go where the narrative took me. I was however disappointed at the Viking-like appearance of the cannibals, it was obvious from the start that they would not be the victors in this film. I also felt that it was all too predictable that Victoria would be rescued when she was captured, and then she would be the only one with the brains to overcome the obviously stupid cannibals, which she is able to do through the simple trick of not showing her drugging bodies. I felt that this ending was too much of a cop out. Her transformation into an "angel of death" is something common seen in the women who survive horror films, and I found myself rooting for the cannibals to overcome this tired convention. This film had the potential to become something great but instead tripped and fell into the stereotypical ending of the horror genre, the Final Girl is able to overcome evil and escape into the world, bringing with her Nova, a child that represents hope for the future of mankind. It seems that the filmmakers were afraid to make a film that presented a truly bleak outlook for the future and instead chose to end the film in a typical Hollywood fashion.

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• Boring and Awful

  Carrigon2008-01-06

  This movie is horrible. It's a bunch of boring people sitting around a room talking and talking about boring stuff. It's like being stuck in someone's horrible poli sci college class or something. I almost walked out, and then like twenty minutes in, one of these guys gets his throat cut. And I was like, wow, maybe stuff will happen now. But no. They went back to the room with the boring stupid talk. By the time the bad guys finally show up, you're just praying for all these losers to get it. The script is one of the worst I've seen in awhile. The sets couldn't be more boring than if you took a cam corder down to your community college. The cast cannot save this film. If I hadn't seen some of them in other movies, I'd swear they couldn't even act. I guess they were slumming it with this thing. Don't waste your time or money. It's not even worthy of a Saturday SciFi Channel showing.

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