Humongous

(Paul Lynch, 1981)
Who decided that some belated and speculative backstory about the murderous titular cretin would be a suitable substitute for actually having him participate in the movie? They talk a good line about him being a misunderstood man-child, but in practice he's a fisheye lens and a respiratory problem; by the time the camera is pointed in his direction the film has succumbed to the incomprehensible underlighting that renders the entire second half functionally invisible. At least the transition into darkness is a way to mark the passage of time; not only is there no narrative, there's a good 20-30 minutes between murder scenes, each of which is judiciously expurgated into nothingness. After the boat blows up there is literally zero going on except these vague-to-hateful teenagers criss-crossing the island in random groupings and hanging around the old house waiting patiently to be murdered. The Scooby-Doo like musings regarding the rampaging monstrosity's true nature are about as impassioned as the various discussions of modelling as a career option. If only the patina of technical competence the movie rides in on had extended beyond the camera department and the fascinatingly cluttered goth scoring, and found its way into the scareless, shapeless, brainless script.