Skinwalker (I) (2021) User Reviews (18)

Not much of anything here really...

[paul_haakonsen · 4/10 · 19 July 2021]

I sat down to watch the 2021 movie "Skinwalker" from writer and director Robert Conway with only a vague idea of what the movie was about. I must admit that the concept of this Indian myth does have some appeal to it, so of course I sat down to watch "Skinwalker".

And while "Skinwalker" certainly was a semi-watchable movie, it just wasn't a particularly entertaining or enjoyable movie. Why? Well, because the storyline was just too simplistic and not enough happened throughout the course of the one and a half hour - give or take - that the movie ran for. Which made for a rather bland viewing experience.

I had hoped for a bit more from "Skinwalker" than what writer and director Robert Conway managed to deliver here.

The acting in the movie was adequate for the most parts, though the actors and actresses weren't exactly given a great script to work with. Nor where the characters in the storyline particularly fleshed out - pardon the pun here.

Ultimately then "Skinwalker" was a movie that came without a ruckus, and it will leave without a ruckus and fade into oblivion without having imprinted a lasting impression on me.

I am rating "Skinwalker" a mere and less than mediocre four out of ten stars.

Skinwalker

[BandSAboutMovies · 4/10 · 13 July 2021]

You know what happens when you steal from a Native American burial site? You set loose the Skinwalker, a shape-shifting ancient demon that won't stop until it gets revenge. Trust me, I live in Mounds Park, a place that has Native American bones directly from my house.

Writer/director Robert Conway also made Eminence Hill, a Western that we reviewed last year. Here, he's telling the story of the curse that breaks out in 1883 Arizona. In fact, he's the first to get possessed, as Conway also plays a man named Hugo who gets bit by a snake. The Skinwalker goes from body to body throughout the film, killing everyone from lawmen to criminals alike.

It's a pretty interesting idea to match demonic possession with the Wild West. While this doesn't have much of a budget and relies a bit heavily on CGI gore, there's still plenty to enjoy in this movie.

Terrible acting

[deafo · 2/10 · 14 July 2021]

It has good potential but with their poor acting have spoilt the movie. Almost like the actors were making a home video.

It is what it is.

[sneomaxizoondweebie · 3/10 · 6 May 2023]

Western Horror is a strange genre. This movie itself is a bit strange. You have two or three good actors and that's about it. Some of the dialogue is so painful I had to put Bengay on my popcorn. A completely trite plot with a bit of a twist, grave robbers rob the wrong grave and get cursed. But, it's not just a curse, there's a snake bite. It explores polygamy, the grey area of outlaws, briefly touches on a marshall with convictions (before his deputy chews up the entire scene and spits it out) a strange attraction that goes nowhere, misused characters and, I'm sorry, one of the worst actresses I've ever seen in a movie. The majority of the cast tries to pretend like they're in the old west at some undetermined time. The lead actress sounds like she's ordering avacado toast. With almost every line delivery.

There are good parts. The marshall, the head outlaw and Red Feather the Native chief do a fine job. Others in the cast do a passable job for a western horror film. Near the end they try to push some messages, which are obvious. All and all, It's not everyone's cup of tea. It's much longer than it should be. The writing isn't horrible, the directing? Not bad. The acting is fifty fifty.

If you're looking for a western horror film, I'd suggest Bone Tomahawk.

No John or Clint in this one....

[gkhege · 1/10 · 14 April 2023]

Wow! As someone that has been watching Westerns for over 60 years, this has to be one of the worst I've ever watched. Goodness, the casting director obviously went to the local Community College and picked up a van load of drama students and just said, " pick the character you would like to portray." All the white and perfect teeth would never have existed in the 1800's. The three young ladies were all to clean and proper and so was the log cabin.

If you're a lover of the old western classics, The Searchers, War Wagon, Shane etc, don't even bother to start this terrible attempt to make a good western.

Historic Skinwalker

[ironjuggies-98308 · 15 July 2021]

Really interesting look at Skinwalker Ranch before it existed.

5 minutes.

[enjozsef · 1/10 · 13 July 2021]

That much i can watch. Its terrible zs kategory. Do not spend any money on this! :D.

Drama School Project

[mistermansfield · 3/10 · 15 August 2021]

Nothing about this movie strikes me as being remotely authentic. Of particular note is the crisp white fabric worn by the Indians, and the teepee that looks like it would be gone in a good gust of wind. The acting looks like acting. People saying lines they have memorised with no real emotion behind them. Unconvincing all round, like someone's final year project at drama school.

Why all the hate?

[aarpcats · 5/10 · 28 November 2021]

Why do so many horror films rely on "destroying the graves of the indigenous" to incite a supernatural power? Because every bit of land in the Western Hemisphere was stolen from indigenous peoples and they are buried all over the United States.

This film doesn't have a lot going for it in the monster department. The Skinwalker here seems to combine a rabies epidemic with some kind of werewolf zombie shapeshifter. It doesn't so much come in the night, but through the bite of those who encounter it. And it isn't even the real monster here.

The monster is the way people treat each other on the frontier, and how it turns good people bad. The good deputy kills an Apache who is trying to help. The woman with nursing skills and a good heart is married to an outlaw. The upstanding Mormon takes a child as his third bride. The outlaws help the people in trouble as much as the sheriff does. And children are turned into killers to help defend a city ravaged by plague.

The good guys aren't all good, and the bad guys aren't all bad. It's a place where everyone is both, and that in itself makes up for the flaws in the film.

Keep an open mind, but cheer for the Apaches.

Did A Good Job At Time Accuracy

[soulcrisis28 · 2/10 · 14 November 2021]

That's its only redeeming quality. This has just God awful acting. I've seen high-school plays with better acting. Real shame too, don't get too many good quality western/horror hybrids.

You'll wanna skip this one.

An Interesting Take On Good and Evil

[baruch60610 · 5/10 · 18 May 2023]

The basic premise of this movie, as the title suggests, is the stirring up of a Skinwalker - a fearsome, shape-shifting spirit that wreaks vengeance on those who awaken it.

Spoilers below: ****************************************************************************

Throughout the movie we see characterizations of "good guys" and "bad guys". The bad guys look like greedy, vicious murderers, but show compassion to fellow bad guys and even to those who sneer at them. The good guys prove to have traits that sometimes repel the bad guys. The characters develop, something that doesn't often happen.

The action is a bit confused; sheriff and deputy kill one bad guy and take his female companion with them to turn in for a reward. They find a town that has been devastated by plague, so they are forced to take her to a town farther away, through dangerous territory.

In the meantime, one bad guy grabs a talisman from an Indian above-ground grave, which begins the terror of the Skinwalker.

What follows are scenes where the female criminal shows compassion and care towards her captors; where other bad guys take over a cabin where three women live - without abusing the women. The women sometimes sneer at the criminals for being low-lifes; but the criminals behave with compassion.

Ultimately, after considerable uproar and killing almost everyone, the talisman is returned to the gravesite, and a shaman performs rites to appease the spirit. All is well.

After some heartwarming scenes of reconciliations and goodbyes, the criminal woman and a "good" woman are riding a train to California. Then we see a newsboy selling papers; a headline tells of how the US Army is being used to clear Indians from the mountain.

The medicine man is at the gravesite when soldiers appear. They soldiers point a rifle at him, telling him he's got to get off the mountain. The medicine man pulls the talisman from the corpse and hands it to a soldier, telling him that the mountain is theirs.

On the train, one of the women suddenly turns into a Skinwalker, and the movie ends.

This might be seen as a realistic outcome, but I didn't much care for it.

Skinwalker 2021

[drgill-51687 · 10/10 · 6 August 2022]

I liked it, it wasn't the best acting, the people were real, no Brad Pitt actors. I liked all the old west persona. Nothing fancy as far as special effects. I think people expect to much because of the title. Maybe they were expecting some kind of Werewolf or Dogman looking creature, but that's not what a Skinwalker is. Only a real Ute or Navajo indian can describe what it truly is, or means. Funny no one knew what a Skinwalker was until the late 20th and early 21st century with a ton of horror movies and Paranormal shows that came out or talked about it. I thought they did a good job portraying what a Skinwalker was. I gave it a 10.

low rating bcoz of cheap production

[fluffset · 6/10 · 18 July 2021]

The low rating do not justified this movie. Because its totally have a good storyline. Imagine if this movie is a big budget one with A-List actor and great old america cinematography. I bet this will be a good one. Hope one day someone will remake with good budget. Its like a good story wasted with low-budget production.

Mountain, Yours.

[wandernn1-81-683274 · 4/10 · 26 March 2022]

Most of this movie is filmed likely in the same clump of trees and brush from different angles. We have the usual suspects of Outlaws, and Sheriffs, and Deputies, and of course... Skinwalkers. Plot / Story not very complex. People meet up and one gets 'turned' and then we go from there, but not very far.

I did like the end of the movie tho for what reason I'm still trying to figure out. 4/10.

And we've found our Blanche!

[mmcfadde-55916 · 2/10 · 8 April 2022]

It's a joke. A big joke. An errand boy sent by a grocery clerk that makes childish movies about skinwalkers. There kinda was a budget so why is it that bad. Can't get enough of those golden crisps...

"Called the great reckonin' ma'am. Saints and sinners alike."

[classicsoncall · 6/10 · 23 November 2021]

I thought the concept for this 1880's Western was pretty interesting, although when you see a modern day ranch house plopped into the story it's easy enough to get distracted. That's what happened in an early scene with Maisie Jackson (Eva Hamilton) entertaining her overnight friend Elmer (Christopher Beeman) just before Marshal Bascom (Dan Higgins) and Deputy Riggs (Cameron Kotecki) came calling. I've seen a handful of these recently made Westerns, and I think the reason they score so low with IMDb viewers is that they're filmed with such a pristine look they don't convey the gritty texture of the Old West. Sometimes the acting and dialog is on the amateurish side as well, dealing another death blow to the picture. This one wasn't terrible, but it takes some getting used to as it skips around between different sets of characters before it settles down to the main plot.

The skinwalker concept comes into play when a grizzled hunter (Nathaniel Burns) helps himself to an elder death token from the corpse of an Indian woman, thereby inviting a demon curse to overtake his body by means of a shapeshifting, evil spirit. The demon is an active sort, transferring from one victim to another throughout the story as it's host body dies or is killed by an adversary. Generally it draws blood to move from one victim to another, making for a genre mixing effort that adds a touch of horror to the film's Western roots. The shaman (Edward Rodríguez) in the story adds a nice touch to the proceedings, insuring that the death amulet makes it's way back to the point of origin from where it was originally stolen. The ending however is served up with some ambiguity, as the medicine man/shaman offers the death token to a cavalry corporal, thereby suggesting that his unit would be cursed for attempting to relocate the local tribe, while at the same time, the last woman (Amelia Haberman) to have contact with the demon's victim serves up a neat jump scare right as the movie comes to an end. From that I guess, you have to draw your own conclusion.

A generally enjoyable hybrid mixture of Western and Horror

[kannibalcorpsegrinder · 7/10 · 21 July 2021]

Working through the countryside, a sheriff and his deputy tracking a dangerous convict and his wife stop at a deserted town a cholera outbreak and rest up to replenish their supplies, only to come across a strange curse from an Indian being turning others into similar such possessed beings and must find a way to stop it.

Overall, this was a pretty solid and fun old-west creature feature. When this one gets the majority of its positives is due to the build-up of the creatures' actions over the town. Focusing heavily on the Western atmosphere of the sheriff and the deputy escorting the woman and her dead husband back to town in order to collect the reward on them, that this does so with the usual exploits of the banter between the officers and their captive, the disbelief between the locals that something could go wrong and the struggles with the local Indian tribe which combines together into a rather engaging first half. While it keeps the horror elements on the outskirts of the events that transpire here with the mysterious ceremonies concocted by the Indian tribe and the strange outbreaks that occur around the area that befall the other settlers, this is all quite intriguing and starts the film quite nicely. Once the idea of the creature and its curse is freed, the film jumps into a fun genre romp offering the kind of solid combination between these two genres. With the initial attack at the cabin where the family fending off the outlaws before being interrupted by the infected spirit crashing the house and battling with them. This causes the discovery of the curse spreading to others once several of the survivors are seen to come down with the same conditions, featuring some fine body-horror sequences of their skin breaking out and bleeding savagely before turning into the creatures. The finale features quite a lot to like with the various confrontations and encounters that manage some fun gore on top of some decent effects on the main creature and the main battle tactics that are deployed against it. These here are the efforts that hold this up against the negatives. There isn't much to dislike here but it does have some issues. The main factor against this one is that for all the good it does establishing its Old-West atmosphere, very little of that comes off with any interest for genre fans. The idea of the three traveling through the wilderness arguing over their personal politics and how they align with the right side of the law while only intermittently featuring anything of any genre consequence is a big factor here that has to be taken into account for fans wanting a more straightforward creature feature set in the time period. Since it's around the halfway point that it switches over a little more cleanly in terms of these genres coming together, the pacing issues can be a hurdle to get over. As well, there's also the film's low-budget limitations that result in there not being a real genuine atmosphere here even though there's a lot of storyline elements present, which all manage to hold this one down overall.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.

Not bad

[sheamoonchild · 6/10 · 7 April 2022]

This movie started kind of slow, to the point where I almost stopped watching, but I stuck it out, and by the end, I was like, "That was pretty cool."