Splinter

On the recommendation of Nakamura's Place's Cool-slayer, a fellow artist and bigger horror buff than myself, I decided to get my hands on the direct-to-DVD film 'Splinter'. Then, while spending my evening with partner in the Darkley comic endeavor, as well as good friend, Don, we decided to give the film a watch.

The story of 'Splinter' revolves around a young couple driving out to spend their anniversary camping (which is a really bad idea, if you've seen 'Friday the 13th'), but have the bad luck of picking up a pair of hitchhikers who quickly turn out to be criminals on the run. That's what you get for trying to help out strangers. So if it wasn't bad enough having a hotheaded, escaped convict and his crazy, coke-addict girlfriend with itchy trigger fingers in the car, things go from bad to worse when they run over an animal along the road. Upon closer inspection of the roadkill, which once resembled something like a dog, it is a mass of flesh, fur, and spines. As they soon discover, the spines, or splinters, are deadly. So much as a prick and an infection begins to spread.

infection spreading from a finger to the hand

The infection can be compared somewhat to the type seen in a typical zombie outbreak story, however this seems much more malicious. A splinter acts much in the same way as a bite, only instead of being viral or chemical it's apparently a form of fungus or mold, as the husband, a medical student, can best deduce. Somewhat akin to the zombies of Russo's 'Return of the Living Dead', any infected body part is "re-animated" and, whether severed or not (think 'Idle Hands', only possessed by an infection rather than supernatural powers), act with an instinctive will of their own. But instead of wanting your brains they prefer to brutally maul and impale victims on their spines. Nakamura put it best by describing them as "sort of zombiefied, violent, bloody, walking sea-urchins".

"re-animated" severed hand

Eventually the survivors, who have holed themselves up in a gas station, realize that the infected attack instinctively by targeting heat. For those of you familiar with the 'Tremors' films, the people of Perfection Valley faced a similar dilemma with the second-stage graboid monsters, known as "shriekers", which hunt by heat. Their solution: covering a Valley survivor with the cold contents of a fire extinguisher. The downside is that the extinguishing agent gradually melts. In 'Splinter', the survivors take a different and more realistic approach by using bags of ice to lower the husband's temperature. The downside is that it's quite dangerous to bring the human body's temperature so low. Additionally, with every extremity numb the husband can barely walk. Not a good situation to be in when your body heat is slowly rising and will soon be detectable to the infected. But that builds the suspense, which makes it all the better.

survivors watching the gas station security camera TV

So all in all, 'Splinter' makes for a good twist on an infection outbreak story with the "urchin zombies" as interesting antagonists. And considering all the crap direct-to-DVD films out there, this makes for one of the few good exceptions. I give it three-and-a-half out of five sea urchins.