Magnolia PicturesReview in a Hurry: A few scenes in this indie horror flick might get under your skin, but the rest of the time you'll be bored out of your mind.
The Bigger Picture: Enough to make you wince, not enough to make you cry: A few clinical that's-gotta-hurt musings are really all Splinter is good for. The ingredients are all there: a small, virtually unknown cast, a remote location, a nasty critter—but the seasoning is all off.
The creature that drives the action is a—well, it's an it, a substance that hijacks living tissue and uses it to hunt down still more prey, somewhere on a continuum between a thing and a blob. It is, fortunately for the reluctant heroes trapped inside a rural gas station, about as dumb as a rock.
Too bad, then, that the leads in director Toby Wilkins' film are sharp enough to let fly with some sardonic one-liners in the face of danger, but get hit with a severe case of the movie stupids when they discover the critter's major weakness, concocting a cockamamy plan when a simple one would do.
It's a surprise to learn that Wilkins comes from the visual effects end of the industry; shots of the creature are in conspicuously short supply, and in a way that's the kiss of death for a flick like this: Early on you figure out that Splinter is going to be too cheap of a project to really bring the scares, and it's not like you were coming for the scenery.
The 180—a Second Opinion: Might be a good time if you go in rooting for the poor, misunderstood fungus monster. Or if you'd consider lifting from The Addams Family the height of horror genius.