This review has some minor spoilers in it.
I avoided renting `Headhunter' for years. I would see it on the shelves and the picture on the cover would make it so that I just did not even want to hold the box in my hands. It has a picture of a deformed head on the cover, which would turn out to be the head of the title character. But it looked really gross. I finally broke down and rented it, and as it turns out, I had no reason to be hesitant, as it is neither very gross nor very scary. Yet that also serves to work against this movie, for much of it is not very interesting enough to keep your attention.
That fact has more to do with the plot than anything else. The plot is that people are being murdered in the city of Miami, Florida, with all the victims being Haitian immigrants and all of them having their heads lopped off. Two detectives are assigned the case. One of them (Wayne Crawford) is struggling with the stress of a separation from his wife. His wife has been seeing another woman, and his ego is pretty dashed. In the meantime, he has to balance out his feelings for his partner (Kay Lenz). So when the grisly murders start to happen, it is just another stressful aspect in his life, but one he hopes he can at least handle. But then the case takes an unusual turn when their prime suspect informs them that the people are being killed by black magic. Yep, for some reason, voodoo has been used to conjure up a big, sword-wielding creature that pops up mysteriously for fun dismemberment.
All that is nice, but it isn't effectively pulled off. It is never fully clear why the murders are happening, for one thing, and then it never makes sense how the creature gets around so fast. If he is magical enough to pop up in and out of places, why not dispose of all targets in one night? But then it starts to target anyone that knows the secret of the Headhunter. So it makes less sense with every little twist, and this makes it so that you have some contempt for the movie for a long time. It isn't until we actually get to see the Headhunter fully in the end climax that the movie turns from so-so to good. The climax is thrilling, well-shot, and all-around cool, although the final scene sort of robs you of all this. It's too bad the rest of the movie couldn't have been as good, for it would have made it a wonderful gem. I mean, it isn't all bad up to this point. It does things some horror movies don't even bother with, and that is nice characterization. The personal struggles of the main characters are realistic and insightful, it's just that the movie chooses not to resolve them interestingly but to resolve them through bloodshed. Still, the things I liked most about the movie were the main players. Crawford and Lenz are good in their parts when the story isn't making you scratch your head. They aren't the usual pretty faces, and I thought that was a good step by the casting department. If only the whole movie had been more cohesive, perhaps these two would be more noticed for their abilities. Zantara's score: 5 out of 10.
I avoided renting `Headhunter' for years. I would see it on the shelves and the picture on the cover would make it so that I just did not even want to hold the box in my hands. It has a picture of a deformed head on the cover, which would turn out to be the head of the title character. But it looked really gross. I finally broke down and rented it, and as it turns out, I had no reason to be hesitant, as it is neither very gross nor very scary. Yet that also serves to work against this movie, for much of it is not very interesting enough to keep your attention.
That fact has more to do with the plot than anything else. The plot is that people are being murdered in the city of Miami, Florida, with all the victims being Haitian immigrants and all of them having their heads lopped off. Two detectives are assigned the case. One of them (Wayne Crawford) is struggling with the stress of a separation from his wife. His wife has been seeing another woman, and his ego is pretty dashed. In the meantime, he has to balance out his feelings for his partner (Kay Lenz). So when the grisly murders start to happen, it is just another stressful aspect in his life, but one he hopes he can at least handle. But then the case takes an unusual turn when their prime suspect informs them that the people are being killed by black magic. Yep, for some reason, voodoo has been used to conjure up a big, sword-wielding creature that pops up mysteriously for fun dismemberment.
All that is nice, but it isn't effectively pulled off. It is never fully clear why the murders are happening, for one thing, and then it never makes sense how the creature gets around so fast. If he is magical enough to pop up in and out of places, why not dispose of all targets in one night? But then it starts to target anyone that knows the secret of the Headhunter. So it makes less sense with every little twist, and this makes it so that you have some contempt for the movie for a long time. It isn't until we actually get to see the Headhunter fully in the end climax that the movie turns from so-so to good. The climax is thrilling, well-shot, and all-around cool, although the final scene sort of robs you of all this. It's too bad the rest of the movie couldn't have been as good, for it would have made it a wonderful gem. I mean, it isn't all bad up to this point. It does things some horror movies don't even bother with, and that is nice characterization. The personal struggles of the main characters are realistic and insightful, it's just that the movie chooses not to resolve them interestingly but to resolve them through bloodshed. Still, the things I liked most about the movie were the main players. Crawford and Lenz are good in their parts when the story isn't making you scratch your head. They aren't the usual pretty faces, and I thought that was a good step by the casting department. If only the whole movie had been more cohesive, perhaps these two would be more noticed for their abilities. Zantara's score: 5 out of 10.