no picture available

I must confess. I was never a kid who was scared by the threat of a monster in my closet or under my bed. I never had so-called "night terrors," and I never needed a night light. As regular readers of this column know, three things scared me as a child: the Space Vampire on that episode of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, that damn Ricki Tiki Tavi cartoon, and being kissed by my mustachioed Grandmother Durgin on holidays. I did have this one nightmare once where the Durgin family went on Family Feud, and G.D. ended up making out with Richard Dawson right next to me. I should have gotten therapy for that, I know.

But I digress. Where was I? Oh, yeah. They. I guess, the characters in They would call me one of the "lucky ones." The film centers around a group of twentysomethings who as little children were menaced by the proverbial monsters in the closet. But these monsters were real, and they sounded nothing like John Goodman and Billy Crystal. The plot is set in motion by a jittery, spastic young man named Billy (Jon Abrahams) who implores his childhood friend Julia (Laura Regan) to believe him when he tells her the monsters of their youth were real. Abrahams does a very impressive job of briefly showing us a man both hunted and haunted by demons, a far cry from his dead-on comedic work as Robert DeNiro's sarcastic son in Meet the Parents.

The film, though, follows the more uninteresting character of Julia, a stick-figure psychology student cramming for a final dissertation. After her initial reunion with Billy ends in tragedy, she starts being the target of some unexplained phenomenon. Soon, she joins forces with two of Billy's similarly sleep-deprived friends (Ethan Embry and Dagmara Dominczyk) to get to the bottom of what is really happening when things go bump in the night.

If you suffered from similar fears when you were a kid, They is one of those horror movies that you'll be thinking about days after you leave the theater. It's a scary good time at the movies. Unfortunately, it's not a scary GREAT time. This is a shame, since the potential was so clearly there. For instance, an opening sequence showing a child being terrorized in his room is one of the more disturbing movie beginnings in recent memory. Sinister! Where the movie let me down was its inability to keep me hooked with new information. Director Robert Harmon is more interested in stalking his characters repeatedly in darkened rooms, halls, and even swimming pools than giving us a compelling, creepy mystery that elevates the material beyond the old, tired, young-people-get-killed-one-by-one structure.

After a while, I just wanted the movie to stop toying with me and show me something. Come out of the shadows, move into high gear. They would grab me, and let me go. Grab me and let me go, and I ceased being scared by it after about an hour. Get on with it, I wanted to yell at several moments after the midway point. Harmon does do a good job keeping whatever is stalking these characters out of camera range until select moments. The They of the title are kind of like a cross between the face-huggers from the Alien" films and the Eight Legged Freaks of earlier this year. The filmmaker really captures the movement and violence of these creatures really well, making them nasty entities to be legitimately feared.

Seeing this film a couple of weeks ago, I left the theater admiring one thing above all others. But after seeing the ads for They in recent days, I have been quite distraught. Let me just say that the final minute of this flick is REALLY cool. A nice, shocking wrap-up that pulls the whole thing together. It's visually daring and quite harrowing if you choose to let the reality of what happens play out in your mind on the drive home. Unfortunately, this ending is IN THE COMMERCIALS!!! Aaragh! I hate that! I hate that above all other things, and I will ALWAYS call a marketing department to task for doing such stupid stuff. Why do this?! Why?! Someone in authority tell me why. My email is at the top of this review! Of all the moments to pick and choose from, why cheat the filmmaker out of his vision?

Just laziness, I fear, and a general lack of faith in the audience. It's like the ads and commercials for Cast Away two years ago that showed Tom Hanks getting off the island and asking about his funeral. Or, like the poster for What Lies Beneath that revealed the Harrison Ford character as not what he seems-a plot point not revealed until the very final third of the movie. Is Robert Zemeckis involved in this movie?! No, it's one of those Wes Craven Presents vehicles. Ah well. Craven should have unleashed Freddy Krueger on whomever cut the commercials for They. I hope THEY can rest well knowing what they've done.

They is rated R for terror/violence, sexual content, and language.