‘Prowl’ DVD Comes With Amazing Amount of Holes

“Prowl” is one of those horror films that gets the horror part right and the film part wrong. Although most of the scares are effective, the film contains them in an atmosphere that deprives them of their intensity – you can’t focus on the terror when you’ve got all those flaws distracting you, and while plot holes are more or less the only issue here, it’s not long before they cause the whole thing to sink. If the image of creatures chewing body parts off human prey can’t make a movie work, nothing can.

The only character with any depth is a rural blonde on the cusp of adulthood named Amber (Courtney Hope), whose envy for the excitement of Chicago inspires her to rent an apartment there. Everybody who comes along when she heads for Chicago to deliver a cash payment to the owner is flat by comparison, which probably means they’ll be around just long enough to become fodder for whatever boogiemen are out to get them. If you’re looking to bet on which of Amber’s quintet of friends won’t come out of this alive, you might want to consider the guy who proposes they go skinny dipping (Joshua Bowman). Monsters in these films are usually after girls who do that, but still.

When engine burnout maroons them on a lonely highway, assistance arrives in the form of a trucker named Bernard (Bruce Payne), who caves in when Amber coaxes him into bringing them along to the Windy City with his cargo. He gives them his word that he’ll get them there in one piece, but Amber and company become antsy when they infer that he’s driven off the beaten path, one that’s awfully bumpy for a delivery to Chicago. He lets them out amid a cluster of abandoned buildings, though “abandoned” might not be an accurate description here – just ask the ghouls that dwell there, which are pretty efficient when it comes to chasing down dinner.

Even in light of the cookie-cutter storyline, the filmmakers behind “Prowl” could’ve given it more with the right approach. Instead, they jeopardize its credibility with one mystery after the next: How come Amber had to convince Bernard to abduct everyone if that’s his function anyway? What’s with the gate on that cargo space, which only works when the plot allows it to? Could anybody start a fire that devastates a building in seconds using a single gas can? The film doesn’t say.