I’ll keep watching new Final Destination movies as long as they keep making them, but I’m personally much more supportive of heartfelt rip-offs than officially licensed sequels. After all, Star Wars began as a loving homage to the Flash Gordon serials, and even the long-running Friday the 13th series was originally meant to cash in on the slasher thrills of John Carpenter’s Halloween. However, these new properties ended up iterating on the stories that inspired them instead of simply regurgitating their tropes ad nauseum, and that’s why they’re so beloved today.
With that in mind, I think it’s about time for a modern filmmaker to properly remix the psychosexual scares of Hellraiser into something new. While there are quite a few enjoyable sequels in the fan-favorite series, Clive Barker’s diminishing involvement should be interpreted as a sign that it might be time to move on. That’s why I was excited to check out Douglas Schulze’s Barker-inspired blend of both religious and cosmic horror, Thorns. Judging from the trailer, this unique combination of Hellraiser, Event Horizon and The Thing seemed to contain enough creative juice to power a legitimately thrilling successor to the disturbing creature features of yesteryear – especially when you consider that the movie also features Doug Bradley as a major character.
Originally titled Dark Planet, this indie production actually went through years of revisions before becoming Thorns. Having grown up with effects-heavy genre flicks, Schulze originally wanted to produce something more in line with the excessive monster movies of the 1980s, but budgetary concerns led to the writer-director changing the story into more of a single-location psychological thriller with a single effects-driven antagonist and religious horror elements inspired by M. Scott Peck’s The Hope for Healing Human Evil.
In the finished film, we follow Priest-turned-NASA-Operative Gabriel Goodman (Jon Bennett) as he checks in on a remote observatory after NASA lost contact with the team that was stationed there. Investigating the aftermath of the chaos that ensued once the team received a mysterious signal from space, Gabriel comes face to face with the gruesome Necronaut – an avatar of evil hellbent on spreading his madness-inducing signal to the entire world. What follows is a grisly game of cat and mouse as Gabriel teams up with the non-verbal Sister Agnes (Cassandra Schomer) in an attempt to stop the blasphemous creature from initiating a disaster of biblical proportions.
There’s a lot to like about this setup. I’m always a sucker for supernatural terror with a sci-fi twist (especially when it harkens back to the best parts of Hellraiser: Bloodlines), and that’s not even mentioning how the isolated observatory feels like a great setting for a paranoid horror flick. Alas, clumsy execution and an unfortunate lack of production value end up sabotaging what could have been a legitimately chilling narrative.
For starters, the bizarre use of unnecessary digital effects and post-production camera movements set the stage for a cheap-looking experience. The observatory interior is also a bit too mundane to be scary aside from a single decorated hallway that the filmmakers reuse again and again in a desperate attempt to establish an eerie mood. I know that this is mainly a budgetary issue, but it wouldn’t cost more money to revise the script into something better suited to the production’s limited resources.
There’s also the fact that this is a single location thriller with no clear reason for our characters to remain trapped there by themselves when they could just as easily drive away and call in for backup (preferably in the form of Special Agents Mulder and Scully). Maybe it’s just me, but I think that the end of the world should involve more than a single NASA employee and a traumatized nun.
Speaking of characters, the two-dimensional script makes it very difficult for Bennett to play his complex role with any level of sincerity, which is an especially big problem when you consider that his transition from Priest to researcher would have made for a much more interesting movie. And while Bradley performs the hell out of his lines despite clearly having shot his scenes during a single afternoon without ever interacting with the rest of the cast even his dialogue suffers from excessive exposition and faulty logic. I also don’t like the fact that his appearance was heavily promoted in all of the film’s marketing despite his character only appearing through video calls and a single dimly lit flashback.
Thankfully, Schomer does a surprisingly great job of portraying a believer brought to her spiritual limit by an extreme situation, and I honestly think that the Silent Nun should have been the lead character here due to the actress’ natural charisma – as well as the fact that communication is one of the film’s most interesting themes. However, even an improved protagonist wouldn’t quite make up for Thorns’ biggest flaw – The Necronaut himself.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the sacrilegious creature design and the fleshy textures adorning the villain’s deformed head (courtesy of practical effects wizard Dan Phillips), but that’s precisely why it’s such a shame that the film completely fumbles its greatest asset. The story hypes up the Necronaut as an apocalyptic harbinger of doom, but the filmmakers then choose to depict him as a generic movie monster who bites and claws at his victims like a clumsy zombie rather than an all-powerful entity like the cenobites that clearly inspired his design. After all, Pinhead and company weren’t scary because they stalked you like Michael Myers, they were scary because of their otherworldly presence and supernatural powers!
This fundamental misunderstanding is really the ultimate nail in Thorns‘ coffin. No amount of good ideas and cool creature designs can make up for a surface-level story about good versus evil that adds nothing new to the genre table. While I appreciate the film’s attempts at fleshing out a religious conspiracy and blending demonic terror with a modern tech-thriller, as well its undeniably badass creature design, Thorns won’t be stealing Hellraiser’s crown any time soon. It’s a shame, really, as the Necronaut design deserved a better movie.
Thorns is available now on VOD outlets.
