Attempting to continue a break-through research project, a scientist at the end of his rope regarding funding for the project is forced to use his wife as a subject when she suffers from a strange disease, yet when the experiment causes her to become a vicious shape-shifting monster she tries to understand what's going on.
This was an underwhelming if still somewhat watchable entry. When this one works the best is with the actual build-up and reveal of what's actually happening to his wife as she undergoes the process. The initial scenes of her coming under the influence of the change with the confrontation at the abusive household or actually discussing the change in her apartment come across as quite important to give this a strong hint of what's going on, and when the latter scene gives way to a full-scale transformation scene in practical effects there's a lot to like here. Given the indie-flavored attacks that are carried out throughout the rest of the film resulting in some solid stalking and ambush scenes featuring tons of nice gore as well as some strong and stylish sleazy sequences, there's far more to like here once this one gets going. There are a couple of issues with this one. The main problem is the film's rather overlong running time that easily could've used some trimming with several issues that don't add much to the running time. There's the beginning showing the exploits at the lab with the scientist cheating on his wife with the assistant, the wife going around trying to keep doing her job while suffering from the physical stress or the banal scenes of the doctors trying to figure out what happened to her during the experiment which all make for a wholly underwhelming beginning to this one. It takes so long before things start happening that there's nothing much going on that keeps it interesting as the plotlines serve it well but take up too much time and stretch the running length out far longer than a story like this is necessary. The secondary storyline about the second patient afflicted with the condition as he had the same procedure could've been removed entirely and not done anything to the story at all being perfect fodder for the possible sequel. There's also the issue of the films' low-budget tendencies coming into play against it at the worst times. The most obvious and apparent is the lighting featured here which is quite dark and renders a lot of the scenes rather difficult to make out which isn't helped by the close-up camerawork and quick-cut editing. Others are just so dark that the effect is ruined by the inept work featured in that setup. As well, there's also the weak CGI featured here that tends to announce itself quite obviously with the inability to really mesh at all with what's going on or featuring the tell-tale halo buzzing around it which isn't natural and adds even more to the scene by not interacting with the rest of the scene. While there's a fun cheesy tone throughout here due to that, there's still the obviousness of the imagery standing out here which all lower this one slightly enough over its positives.
Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language, Nudity and sexual scenes.
