After being sent an armored gauntlet as a clue, Professor Isla Whelan (Lauren Holly) and a handful of her graduate students head into their university’s dingy basement storage rooms and discover an ancient medieval metal box. Once opened, the group inadvertently unleashes a trapped Banshee, and after hearing her scream all of them, including the professor’s daughter Shayla (Marcelle Baer), are now marked for death.

Their only hope is a retired, allegedly crazy former professor named Broderick Duncan (Lance Henriksen). But he has his own plans for the Banshee, and as far as he’s concerned he could care less if the whole lot of them are dismembered by the creature just as long as he gets revenge upon the university faculty he feels did him wrong.

CRITIQUE

I got to tell you, as far as Lionsgate’s continuing lineup of After Dark Originals are concerned Scream of the Banshee didn’t do a heck of a lot for me. As far as supernatural B-grade monster movies are concerned, the initial setup for this one is perfectly fine, it’s what happens after the title creature is unleashed where I begin to have some problems. The bottom line here is that the movie isn’t scary, isn’t suspenseful and, in the end, isn’t all that interesting, and other than a couple of inventive splatter effects the majority of the film barely kept my interest all the way until the end.

It’s Anthony C. Ferrante’s (House of Bones) script I have the most problems with. Working from a story he co-wrote with Jacob Hair, the movie does a great job of setting up its rules only to break them time and time again as the climax nears. Everything is rushed and forced, especially during the final third when Henrikesen’s bizarrely evil Broderick Duncan comes into the picture, and it would have been nice had our main characters been given a bit more shading that way their deaths could have potentially meant something.

All the same, there are some decent touches here and there, Hannah Beachler’s (Husk) prodection design creatively creepy and a definite standout. Ryan Dodson’s (Penance) score is suitably effective, while director Steven C. Miller does manage a couple of pretty decent jump scares and one gruesomely inventive kill that, while hardly original, do manage to get the job done all the same.

Problem is, the movie itself bored me. I didn’t care about the characters, didn’t care who lived, didn’t care who was going to die and didn’t care to find out why Duncan was so whack-a-doo insane. In other words, I just didn’t care, Scream of the Banshee hardly the bloodcurdling B-movie horror show I was hoping it would be before slipping the DVD into the player.

THE VIDEO

Scream of the Banshee is presented in 1.78:1 Widescreen.

THE AUDIO

Scream of the Banshee comes with English 5.1 and 2.0 Dolby Digital audio tracks with optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles.

THE EXTRAS

Special features for this release include:

• Audio Commentary with director Steven C. Miller and composer Ryan Dodson 

It’s a relatively solid track, even though Miller does the majority of the talking and I’m not exactly sure why Dodson is even on it. But I do appreciate that the director is willing to talk about the areas of the film he believed could have been better, and his explanation of what shooting was like during the rushed final days explains a lot as to why the climax is as gosh darn underwhelming as it ultimately is.

Also included are trailers for other After Dark Originals Husk, Prowl, Seconds Apart and Fertile Ground, all of which I’d recommend watching (especially those first two) three or four times before looking at Scream of the Banshee even once.

FINAL THOUGHTS

As derivative supernatural monster movies that first aired on the Syfy Channel are concerned, Scream of the Banshee is decidedly better than average. Unfortunately, that just makes the movie average, and while I wouldn’t begrudge fans of this sort of thing from picking it up as a rental everyone else probably should probably just avoid it altogether and move on to something else.