Rish Outfield's reviews
A terrible movie here, folks. First of all, it's hard to review this film objectively. I REALLY enjoyed the book (one of my favourite Dean Koontz novels), and I'm way too much of a Mark Hamill fan (regardless of what everybody tells me). But this was a uniquely weak film. I've mentioned before that films with the potential for good/greatness are much more disappointing than those that were empty from the beginning. This is, what, the tenth attempt to make Koontz's Watchers into a movie, and again, somebody somewhere screwed up. I mean, what is the problem with this book? I can't tell you, except that even after several other tries, this one is particularly bad. The acting was sub-par, the violence hokey and unnecessary, the special effects laughable, and the editing was as bad as a sixth-grader with two VCRs. There were a couple of moments when I thought, "Wait a minute, maybe this won't suck," which made it all the worse when it did. "Nightmare on Elm Street 4 & 5"'s Lisa Wilcox wasn't spectacularly awful, just awful. The pathetic-but-didn't-have-to-be monster was never scary, and often so poorly done that I longed for another Ewok movie. And what can be said about poor aging, messed-up-looking, fat Mark Hamill except that he should stick with cartoon voice-overs?
Best Scare: Maybe one of the half-dozen times the dog jumped out. Maybe
I'd Recommend It To: Only those who would then be motivated to read the book.

The tyranist's thoughts
Yet another attempt at getting the Dean Koontz adaptation right. This one is a little more faithful than some, but the production values are so abysmally low that it is hard to watch. I will say that Concorde was at least trying for the most legitimate film they could make. It just didn't work. Watching this also made me think that Mark Hamill's lack of a career was for a reason. We all loved him as Luke, but he just doesn't make the grade here. I would also like to find out who we can blame for the Outsider. They started out right by hiding him as much as possible and mostly showing reactions or the occasional paw, but later we saw more and more of that thing. It was hideous, but not in the good horror movie sense.
I recently heard an interview with Dean on a local radio station (I think he was promoting Seize the Night in which he stated that Watchers was his one of his favourite novels. He mentioned a couple of others as well, but it sticks in my mind because Watchers was the first Koontz book I ever read. I like to imagine that he winces every time he sees a new adaptation of this one, but I suppose any residual royalties he gets help to ease the pain.