[Lockjaw:Rise Of The Kulev Serpent]
Plot:Using ancient Voodoo, an African priest creates an indestructible evil. The evil is rediscovered by a boy in modern day America, conjuring a giant serpent that terrorizes a terrified community. Now the only thing that stands in its way is Army special ops vet and master hunter Nick Kirabo (DMX) who has been waiting for "Lockjaw" to return.

Cast:DMX, Wes Brown, Louis Herthum, Lauren Fain.

My Thoughts:Try not to think too much.

Review:"Lockjaw" used to be "Carnivorous". I liked that title better, but the people over at Syfy figured "Lockjaw:Rise Of The Kulev Serpent" would be more marketable. Their loss. This film is another CGI-ridden killer snake flick. And before you start rolling your eyes and flaling back in your chair, hanging your head uttering to yourself..."oh no...not again!", keep in mind this one tries really, really hard.

As opposed to the others which don't try at all. The movie follows an ancient evil which was conjured up by an African voodoo priest long ago. Now, in modern day America, said evil was released as part of a plan of revenge against a certain someone who another person deemed responsible for their wifes demise. As usual with films like this, people can never control ancient evils.

"Pumpkinhead" was the first movie to teach us this hard lesson. And so the ancient evil, which is really just a demon serpent that likes to devour people, begins to wreak havoc on a small town, devouring the populace, harassing the locals, and scaring that obligatory group of teens who just wanna have sex and smoke dope in peace. Thus, someone has to save the day, and so it might as well be a special ops veteran named Nick Kirabo, played by rapper/actor DMX.

After all, he's a hardcore rapper who's albums have gone platinum, he's tough, he can score big time weaponry from the local gangbangers, and he's familiar with the demon serpent from an ecounter he had with it back in the day. So might as well eh? After all, if we left saving the day up to those obligatory "relations-having", dope-smoking teens, nothing would get done. So Nick decides to shut down lockjaw, but the question is....can he? Can anyone really? Well sure they can. It's a 90 minute film, and someone's gotta stop this thing before the end credits roll.

Can't be dilly-dallying around all day after all. But seriously though, DMX makes this movie jump from an F- flick, to a B+ flick. DMX's character is entertaining to watch, cool to watch, and is the only tolerable person in the entire movie. Not to mention, the characters is written as a total badass of course, but because it's DMX, the badassness of his character actually comes of as genuine and viable.

As opposed to if they had a regular everyday, run-of-the-mill actor playing the part. So in that regard, DMX helps this film tremendously. And because he gets a large amount of screentime, it's even all the better. But in reality, it's mostly because no one else in the movie is worth focusing on. Except Lockjaw, the demon snake, who goes around attacking people and gobbling them up like little tiny christmas cookies. Yeah, this movie has the typical funny and hilarious kills you'd expect in a movie with a cgi snake slithering around.

So in that regard, the film not taking itself too seriously is a plus in the case of this picture. But like I said above, try not to think too much going into seeing this movie. After all, it's a Syfy original, so it's not gonna be a superb piece of work. But when compared to Syfy's previous originals, this movie is definitely the cream of the crop. Or their respective crop.

"Lockjaw" ends on a normal note, and by normal I mean good triumphs over evil, everyone cheers for the time being, and then their's the obligatory question mark ending that suggests a sequel, but any right-thinking person knows there'll never be one because, well, come on, it's a SYFY ORIGINAL! "Lockjaw" is one of those movies that's good to watch on a Saturday night while drinking with friends. When you're just looking to pass the time and watch a CGI demon-snake eat people who are too stupid for their own good in terms of horror movie smarts. It almost reaches "so bad it's good status", but not quite.

Positives:DMX as Nick is an easy character to root for, and makes the most of his on-screen scenes. Many of the kills are funny stuff.

Negatives:CGI snake of course, and outside of DMX's character, the other characters are total idiots.

Overall:Two stars out of four.





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