If I think about the movie, it really shouldn't have worked. The special effects were strictly Dr. Who level. The plot rehashes elements from The Terminator and The Thing, and these weren't necessarily completely original movies in and of themselves. And then there's that title. It doesn't exactly instill fear when you first hear it.

And yet, this movie works. It's clever, unpretentious craft (due in no small part to the skills of J.R. Bookwalter, the film's director/producer/photographer/editor) was something of a surprise, until I remembered an earlier film of Bookwalter's, The Dead Next Door, and realized I was once again in the hands of a real storyteller.

The Polymorph arrives on earth from outer space in some computer animation that will not have the guys at ILM looking over their shoulders in panic, and soon takes over the body of survivalist/coke dealer Sascha Graham. When a scientist and a cop arrive at Sascha's cabin to investigate what was the crash landing of the Polymorph's spaceship, they are killed, and now two sets of people -- the interns of the scientist and the thugs who want Sascha's coke -- are set to descend on the area, each unaware of the other ...

One thing that distinguishes the screenplay (written by lead actor James Edwards, who was working from a Bookwalter's story treatment) is the speed with which it sets up its characters and then plunges them headlong into the genre demands of the plot. Scenes that could be forced, such as those in which the leads (Edwards and actress Ariauna Albright) are introduced to us in the midst of a blind date, could have been insufferable ... but there's actually a little chemistry, and the scenes are kept as brief as they need to be.

The meatier roles are those of the gangsters out for the coke, and Tom Hoover and Pam Zitelli have a lot of fun with their bickering gangsters for the film's first half. As events conspire to bring the gangsters and campers together, the film actually manages to build up some good will toward most of the people on screen. This is no mean feat -- it's what too many horror films seem to fail at most of the time -- and it makes the second half genuinely suspenseful despite some flaws.

For starters, once people get possessed by the Polymorph they seem to lose any of the acting ability they had before being taken over. It makes one realize how hard it must be to play a terminator on screen -- that blank affect can look pretty corny if you don't carry yourself in just that certain way. And while I can forgive crude special effects on a budget as limited as this (it was made for something like nine thousand bucks), I have to say that they are at times a little over the top -- there are some cases where a little green lightning could have gone a long way.

But there are some other stylistic flourishes that make up for these small qualms, such some of the shots done in a kind of comic-book panel style, ala Creepshow. This serves not only to punch up the visual presentation a little, it also sets up a world in which the broad characterizations make sense and we're more accepting of the action when it starts to become more cartoonish. (On one of the film's commentary tracks, it's pointed out that this touch was actually added in post, and that screenwriter Edwards hated this particular technique. Oh well. I liked it.)

The film is given quite the deluxe treatment in its "remastered special edition" dvd. There are two commentary tracks with director J.R. Bookwalter, one of which is with James Edwards, Tom Hoover, and Joe Daw, and the other features starlet Ariauna Albright), a making of documentary, bloopers, auditions, trailers, and liner notes by the director. While there are some stories that get repeated throughout both commentaries and the documentary, you do get a good sense of the blood-sweat-and-graphics that went into the making of the film. (I was actually surprised that there was on-set footage still around for a movie made almost ten years ago on such a low budget.)

Bookwalter asserts throughout that he was more or less bullied into making the film by Edwards and Albright, but this never has a "job for hire" feel to it. But then, nobody makes a movie on a four-figure budget just for the money, do they? I feel like there was some love poured into the production, and it's enough to make you feel like returning some of your own.

Buy it here!