Watchers (1988) Region 2
Corey Haim out acted by a dog shock! Come to think of it Corey Haim out acts a dog would have been more of a surprise. Haim plays the teenage hero in this adaptation of the Dean R. Koontz bestseller. When he finds a lost dog he takes it home with him little suspecting the mutt has escaped from a secret research lab or that it’s probably more intelligent than he is. It was part of an experiment to create the perfect killing machine, the dog itself acting as a lure to draw another genetically engineered creature to its victim and that other creature is free as well and looking to carve itself a little Haim sandwich.
While the novel this is based on had an equally silly premise it was still able to craft some effective moments most notably the climax which manages to elicit the reader’s sympathy for the “bad” beastie. There’s none of that here, everything is black and white. With the best moments of the novel excised this has been turned into a simple boy and his dog tale albeit with horror/SF slant. Nothing wrong with that per se, I’ve enjoyed many a shaggy dog story but then they never starred Cory Haim. He’s all 80′s hair and zero acting ability, I really wasn’t kidding about the dog having superior thespian abilities.
