Paul Andrews Shrieker is set in the small American town of Westbrook where university student Clark (Tanya Dempsey) is looking for some really cheap digs, fellow university student Zak (Jamie Gannon) tells Clark of Greenhaven Hospital which has been abandoned & empty for 50 odd years & that he & four other students are squatting there. Zak invites Clark to join them which since the rent is free is too good an offer to turn down, also living there is David (Parry Shen), Mike (Chris Boyd), Tanya (Alison Cuffe) & Elaine (Jenya Lano). Things get spooky straight away, the first night Clark hears a chilling shrieking noise & also finds ancient symbols written on the floor which happen to summon an ancient demon known as a shrieker which needs five sacrificial offerings for the one who summoned it to be able to control it & the squatting students are as good a sacrifices as anyone else...Directed by David DeCoteau under the pseudonym of Victoria Sloan (now we know why there's so many gay jokes here) this is yet another cheap Full Moon Pictures production from Charles Band, to be fair to it Shrieker isn't as bad as one might expect but it's definitely not something one would call good. While watching Shrieker it's hard to not notice the glaring similarities between it & Jacques Tourneur's classic Night of the Demon (1957) with it's plot about someone raising a demon from hell & having to pass people slips of paper with ancient incantations on them so the demon will kill them & the only way to stop it is to give the piece of paper to another willing person, co-incidence? I doubt it. The script by Benjamin Carr takes itself very seriously & is far too slow, apart from a brief opening sequence when the Shrieker is seen it doesn't make an appearance again until the 40 odd minute mark. So basically in that 40 odd minutes we learn that this assorted bunch of students are squatting in a disused hospital & one of them is messing about summoning up demons from hell & sacrificing their buddies, this really needed more pace & purpose because the story is weak & pretty predictable. The one thing that saves Shrieker from being totally worthless in my opinion is the mystery surrounding just who the traitor is & why they are summoning up a demon, there's a reasonable double twist ending which is OK but the Shrieker creature is far too easily defeated.Director DeCoteau, sorry Sloan does OK, it's reasonably well lit & there's an alright spooky old house type atmosphere. The Shrieker itself is only ever seen in quick cuts, in fact you'll get a better look at the creature on the video cover on the IMDb's main page for Shrieker than in the actual film itself. The special make-up effects on it look pretty good so I don't really know why the makers were so afraid to show it. Forget about any decent gore as there isn't any, there's a few dead bodies covered in blood but nothing else. One thing I wondered while watching Shrieker was that if the hospital had been abandoned for over 50 years why was the electricity still turned on?Technically the film is good, surprisingly shot in full 2:35:1 widescreen it looks nice enough & has reasonable production values considering it's a Full Moon production. The acting is OK but nothing particularly memorable.Shrieker was better than I expected because of one or two decent plot twists but please don't take that as any sort of resounding recommendation because it isn't. Average at best really, it could have been a lot worse but at the same time it could have been a lot better.

Scarecrow-88 Hunk of trash only the Full Moon Studios could make has a group of college kids, staying for free in an old hospital with no one knowing, as a demonic creature with two faces(barely visible the entire film because of incomprehensible lighting)passes through walls killing each member who has a certain sheet of paper with ancient markings. Someone amongst them(it won't be too hard to prove, but a slight twist is so uninspiringly revealed and limply executed you'll just scoff)is the mastermind behind who the beast kills and must be revealed before it kills everyone.Cheap, badly acted mess has a "That's it?!" kind of weak ending that'll have you exasperated at why you just wasted your time. Tanya Dempsey, who couldn't act her way through a wet paper sack, has the heroine duties as the newest member of the college rooming bunch named Clark. Oh, and the title refers to the sound the beast makes before it attacks it's next victim.

Werewolf-6 A little side note first, I have seen every full moon and almost every Charles Band pre-Full Moon movie, I enjoy most of them to a good extent, and I understand if my opinion is "mine alone." Onto the comments. The movie is about college "squatters" - people who don't want to pay to have living space - they take over a hospital, but it has other tenants... one is human.... the other is not... There is the "Shrieker" a creature with 2 heads from another dimension that loves to feed on whoever has it's symbol. The symbol cannot be thrown away, it has to be given, and if you get it, you die! This movie really has a lot of elements that I love in horror movies... Characters suspecting each other of doing the killings, and monsters who walk thru walls! Muahaha Also I found Clark (Tanya Dempsey) to be very convincing in her role of the newest squatter (also really cute!) too bad she hasn't done anything else...

MM2000 Thirty minutes could have been snipped out of this film without anyone noticing the difference. What is wrong with the idea of a short film? Does every good idea have to be stretched and contorted to achieve that apparently all-essential 90-minute minimum film-makers believe is necessary or cinema-viewers have come to expect? In condensed form, stories like "Shrieker" could be assembled for a good cable television series. It took talent to create 50-minute macabre masterpieces like "Thriller" and "Outer Limits." If you can stay awake beyond the lengthy setup for this movie, prepare to rock. However, what is intended to pass for suspense is simple boredom. Interestingly enough, the real suspense comes along when the action finally asserts itself. Some good, scary effects, both visual and aural.