30 Day Horror Challenge-Day 29: A great horror movie with a terrible cast.

For the next 30 days (or whenever I stop being lazy and finish it), I will be giving my fingers short bursts of exercise by completing the 30 Day Horror Challenge, found here. Hopefully it will give you a bit of insight into what horror is for me. Don't forget to check back every day for a new installment.

Day 29: A great horror movie with a terrible cast.

Gosh darn it, another tough one. Typically, a film with a bad cast ends up being a bad film, and if a film is good, the cast won't seem bad. The only example I could think of was 1995's disappointing big budget scifi outing, Species. The film has an all-star cast with money-hogs like Ben Kingsley, Michael Madsen, Alfred Molina, Forest Whitaker and Marg Helgenberger, all big names and top-notch actors individually, but in the H.R. Giger-designed monster flick, they can be described in only one way; a clusterfuck. The film is pretty lame at best, what with psychics, unscientific scientists and uncountable plot incongruities, but what always stands out is that these powerful actors all swagger around the screen as if they are the best movies 1950s B-movies could offer. Almost every scene involves this large group of people gathering in a small location, where they awkwardly knock around each other, exchanging aggravating arguments with all the weight of preschoolers who want a new toy. The basic plot of the film, experts chasing a scientifically engineered alien that has escaped, is simple and nice, and the effects are great, but there are too many chefs in this kitchen, and they all have destroyed what should have been a lovely dinner.