Watchers (1988)

Watchers (1988)

Directed By: Jon Hess

Starring: Corey Haim, Michael Ironside, Lala Sloatman, Barbara Williams

Subgenre: Creature Feature

Synopsis: An explosion at a secret government facility unleashes a biologically altered monster and a super intelligent golden retriever.  As the government races to cover up the attacks by the monster, a teenager by the name of Travis stumbles upon the dog.  Travis, his mother, and the dog work to uncover the government conspiracy and to stop the monster from killing again.

Thoughts: Watchers is easily one of those movies where I had fond memories that were actually much better than the movie.  This was based, rather loosely, on the Dean Koontz novel, but really just used the basic idea and ran with the movie.  It has been at least 20 years since I read the book, so all memories of it are distant, but I remember it being a pretty good story.  Of course, I remembered this as being a great movie as well.

That’s not to say that Watchers is bad, it is just that I was a little let down by it.  Corey Haim just isn’t the same without Feldman at his side, and other than Michael Ironside, the rest of the actors are forgettable.  Ironside plays a psychopathic government agent, something he does very well.

I think what Watchers needed was a little more tension, or at least believable tension.  It was pretty boring at times, and even the ending was nothing great.  I know this one has its followers out there, but I don’t think I can count myself as one of them. Glad I caught this on Netflix and didn’t shell out big bucks for the OOP DVD.