ATTACK OF THE MORNINGSIDE MONSTER

(A.k.a. THE MORNINGSIDE MONSTER).

Morningside is a sleepy American town where nothing much seems to happen. Local sheriff Tom (Robert Pralgo) has little to worry about: even the local drug dealers are decidedly small-time - besides, their oversized ringleader Clyde (Mike Stanley) went to school with Tom and, although he's always been a bit of a bully, he essentially respects the fact that his old pal now wears a badge of the law.

Anyhow, Tom has other things on his plate. His first deputy, Klara (Tiffany Shepis), is a hardnosed but loyal assistant who needs putting back in line from time to time; new second deputy, youngster Scott (Matt Kabus), is so fresh behind the ears that Tom inevitably feels responsible for his welfare. Tom is, after all, a good guy.

Just look at how close he's remained to childhood pal Mark (Nicholas Brendon). The pair share a close connection, and you get the sense early on that they'd do virtually anything for each other. But inadvertently, Mark is also adding to Tom's stress - or at least, his situation is: Mark's wife Abby (Amber Chaney) is dying from cancer. The hospitals have sent her home to die, admitting there's nothing more they can do for her. This in turn is destroying Mark on the inside, and Tom - a good friend to both of them - feels their pain.

He's even willing to bend the rules - a first for him, you suspect - when Mark is arrested for obtaining a huge amount of marijuana from one of Clyde's pushers, in the belief that it will help relieve the pain Abby is going through.

So the last thing Tom needs is more shit on his doorstep. Unluckily for him, that's precisely what he gets when a couple of amorous teens make out in nearby woods one evening and stumble upon the decayed corpse of a missing local.

Suddenly, Tom also has to contend with the fact that there may be a killer on the loose. The victim was a member of Clyde's drug circle, and Tom discovers a weird symbol scrawled onto the wall of his living room ... could it be that a rival drug gang are marking out their territory?

Well, that's up to Tom, Klara and Scott to fathom - if they can (a) cope with all the other small-town issues that crop up on a daily basis and (b) stay alive long enough to narrow their list of suspects down.

ATTACK OF THE MORNINGSIDE MONSTER - or MORNINGSIDE MONSTER, as is the onscreen title - is a well-made film that focuses a great deal on character and exposition. It's a daring move for a low-budget genre feature to make, so credit to writer Jayson Palmer and director Chris Ethridge for resisting any urge to succumb to conventional jumps and gore at regular intervals.

However, as commendable as their approach is - and it IS - there is a problem. There's a flatness to proceedings that renders the film extremely slow-moving as a result. It's not the actors' faults, as they're all above average for this ilk of film.

Perhaps it's the ill-placing of music. There are few songs and even fewer musical cues throughout the film, but they seem to be lumped together in a manner that results in large passages of the film being music-free. This wouldn't be so noticeable were it not for a lot of static camerawork and aimless dialogue serving to accentuate the monotony of many scenes.

However, MONSTER does eventually build to a decent conclusion which kind of makes sense of the emphasis on exposition earlier on. The identity of the killer, and their motive, is unfortunately a little predictable. However, when Ethridge reveals in the audio commentary track that his favourite slasher flick is MY BLOODY VALENTINE largely due to its emphasis on character development, you do get a greater sense of what he was striving for. And he wasn't unsuccessful in this regard.

There are a couple of moments of grisliness. They sit ill with the tone of the rest of the film, to be honest, but I suspect they're here - along with one scene of boobies, the occasional rock music on the score and profanities in the script - to help find the genre audience.

ATTACK OF THE MORNINGSIDE MONSTER comes to DVD courtesy of MVD Visual.

The film is presented uncut and in its original 1.78:1 aspect ratio. It was shot on a Cannon C300 digital camera and, true to form, the colours are sometimes a little muted - especially in night scenes. But, generally speaking, images are crisp and detail is fine. The film plays cleanly throughout.

English audio is provided in both 2.0 and 5.1 mixes. Although there are no issues, it's also true that neither is particularly remarkable. Optional English subtitles are a tad soft and do suffer from the occasional typing error, but not enough to spoil the experience if you're reliant upon them.

A static main menu page opens up the disc. From there, a static scene selection menu allows access to the film via 15 chapters.

Bonus features commence with an audio commentary track from Ethridge, Palmer and producer/script consultant Michael H Harper. They complement each other well, allowing each other space to speak while keeping the event fluent with a wealth of information covering the source material (a short story of Palmer's from 1994), locations, the songs used on the soundtrack, the individual actors, how Chaney's hair was digitally reduced to give the impression of her being a cancer sufferer, how the gore was realised and so much more. Not without humour, this is a gracious and easily likeable chat track.

We also get a couple of trailers: a teaser trailer for the film which runs at 104 seconds in length, and a "final trailer" which, weirdly enough, is shorter at just 85 seconds long.

MORNINGSIDE MONSTER is certainly flawed but, nevertheless, must be commended for its bid to stray away from formula and focus on storyline and characters so much.

Consequently, it's well worth a look for the curious.

Review by Stuart Willis