It Waits

Plot synopsis:
In a remote national forest, five archaeology students discover a cave associated with an ancient Native American legend. Using explosives to gain entrance, they find prehistoric drawings and bones strewn across the cave floor. Suddenly from the shadows, a creature emerges and slaughters the students.
Two months later, forest ranger Danielle "Danny" St. Claire (Cerina Vincent) is sitting on the floor of an isolated ranger station tower in the same national forest—drunk and crying. Remembering the tragic car crash that killed her best friend Julie Cassidy, Danny blames herself for the tragedy because she was driving after a night of heavy drinking. Her boss Rick Bailey (Greg Kean) calls to tell her she will be alone at the station for the next few days while her colleagues battle a forest fire. He also informs her that cracks have developed in nearby Devil's Gate Dam and instructs her to drain off water to relieve the pressure. That night, awakened by nightmares of the accident, Danny hears sounds coming from outside. With rifle in hand, she descends the tower to investigate and discovers claw marks on the tool shed door.
The next morning, Danny's forest ranger boyfriend Justin Rawley (Dominic Zamprogna) arrives to keep her company. After inspecting the dam, they return to the station for a romantic dinner during which Danny confesses she was the one driving the car when it crashed, and that she allowed the police to think Julie was driving. Justin consoles her and they make love. During the night, they're awakened by the sound of the emergency siren on the roof. They investigate and discover that something destroyed the satellite dish, rolled Justin's jeep over into a ditch, and disabled the radio. The next day, they go to the nearby dam to use its radio. They meet up with Carl and Evelyn Nash—two campers that recently went missing. Despite Justin's warnings, the Nashes head out on their own. Soon they are hunted down by the creature and killed. Meanwhile, at the dam, Justin and Danny find the radio room completely trashed. Later when they enter the station, Evelyn's bloody corpse swings down from the ceiling on a chain. When they rush outside, Carl's body is thrown off the roof onto them.
Justin heads off alone to get help. That night in the woods, the creature viciously attacks and kills him. The next morning, Danny notices the tool shed was broken into. Inside she finds Justin's severed head on a shelf and his bloody body on the roof. Danny buries Justin's remains and decides to fight back. That night the creature attacks the station, but Danny is able to shoot and wound it. The next morning, Danny discovers a trail of green gooey blood, and follows it to the cave. There, she meets the teacher of the students who were killed in the cave. He reveals what he knows about the creature, including some of its weaknesses. He also explains that the demon is drawn to Danny's negative energy—her guilt over her friend's death—and provides her with documents about the ancient legend. Back at the station, Danny finds the dug-up corpses of the Nashes and Justin arranged around the table, with Justin's severed head on a plate. When it starts to rain, Danny remembers the teacher saying the creature doesn't like water. She goes off to hunt for the creature. When the rain stops, however, the creature attacks her, rips flesh from her leg, and then flies away. Back at the station, Danny finds the Nashes' cellphone and calls her boss Rick and tells him to bring the SWAT team, but he dismisses her request believing she's drunk.
The next day, Rick arrives at the station alone and accompanies Danny to the cave, which she plans to destroy with several sticks of dynamite. Soon they discover the teacher's body impaled on a pole in the middle of the road. The creature flies by and drops Justin's headless body onto Rick, crushing him to death. Danny drives off with the creature in close pursuit. As she approaches the cave, the creature lands on the hood and attacks Danny, who steers the vehicle directly into the opening of the cave, sending the creature flying inside. When it attacks one last time, Danny lights the dynamite and escapes just as the dynamite explodes, sealing the entrance with the creature trapped inside. Afterwards, Danny returns to the station, lays her ranger badge on the table, and then leaves. Sometime later, Danny tells a policeman about the killings, but says she doesn't know who did it. Then she explains that she was the driver in the accident that killed Julie, accepting responsibility for her friend's death.

Tags: violence, flashback

Review:
The good news, however, is that "IT" (which is this time a mythological Indian demon instead of Pennywise the Clown) only waits for a good half hour  until the inevitable dramatic sub plot and dull character drawings are over and done with  before going on its outrageous murderous rampage.
There's a terribly lame sub plot trying to trick us into believing the mythological creature actually feeds and strengthens on misery and sadness (and thus Danielle herself attracts it), but I strongly advise you to disregard the ludicrous dialogs and fully focus on the special effects and gory massacres.
"It Waits" borrows ideas and elements from at least a dozen of other (and more successful) horror movies, but hey, you've surely seen a lot worse already and at least the second half provides plenty of carnage and the creature's design is reasonably horrific.
The filming location is stupendous and reminded me of those glorious early 80's slasher movies that also entirely took place in forestry regions, like "Just before Dawn" and "The Final Terror".
Cerina Vincent isn't very believable as a park ranger heroine, but she has obvious other qualities like her incredible good look and an impressive rack.
"It Waits" is decent horror fare, better than some of the dreck that is getting released in movie theaters..
The character parts of the story were more interesting than the actual "horror movie" stuff.
The lonely forest ranger Danielle St. Claire (Cerina Vincent) works alone in Tower 19 of the Forestry Department of a remote National Park.
When a group of students releases a demon trapped in a mystical cave, the creature attacks tourists nearby her tower and later her boyfriend Justin Rawley (Dominic Zamprogna).
Without communication or means of transportation, Danny fights to survive while the monster is attracted by her sadness."It Waits" is a reasonable low budget movie that gives the sensation of déjà vu since it uses many clichés of the horror genre.
Cerina Vincent is extremely sexy and has a good performance, attracting the creature not because of her beauty but her pain and misery for the loss of her close friend.
The first 20 minutes plays out like a weakly dramatised infomercial on the dangers of drink driving, the two characters we have a handle on by this time are about as deep as a cookie tray, seem to have an almost fatal case of the clichés and just as "she" confesses to "he" that she was responsible for her best friend's (and his girl friend's) death - what do they do?
At this point I switched off and for a few seconds I thought about making it my purpose in life to warn everyone off buying or renting this movie - I gave it a rating of 1 for the nice forest scenery and the silly parrot with the fake voice.
Nevertheless, it is always disappointing to see the same ridiculous clichés about stupid people doing stupid things in order to give the unseen monster easy pickings (not to mention to keep the writer, director, and producer from exerting themselves by actually trying to think up a fresh idea.) How many times do we need to see someone skipping out into the woods in the middle of the night when they know there's a monster bumping people off?
Bottom line: bad acting, worse script - would have been more satisfying to see everyone killed in the first five minutes and then watch the monster wander around aimlessly in the woods for a few hours..
Better than average low budget horror movie from the Sci-Fi channel.It's a good cat-and-mouse yarn in the vein of Jeepers Creepers, with the creature "feeding on" the terror of its prey before finishing them off.
That would be a park ranger named Danielle (Cerina Vincent, who carries the film well), stationed at a secluded area of an unnamed national park (based on dialog, it's apparently the Grand Canyon area).Danielle's angst, fear, suffering, and her resolve to turn the tables on her tormentor are all portrayed well, as is her pivotal back story.
OK, but basically an average horror movie.The most-excellent Cerina Vincent makes this better than it has any right to be.I was not aware that US Forest Service rangers regularly operate hydroelectric generation plants.
"It Waits" is more of a 'character' and love story than a pure 'horror' movie.
I think this comes from most movie people knowing close to nothing about guns and having the idea in their heads that a 'hunting rifle' is a bolt-action with 'scope type.
For some reason while watching IT WAITS it occurred to me that this movie looks and feels a bit like some sort of 90 minutes long stand alone episode of THE X-FILES (but only without Scully and Mulder running around in it and it's not about aliens either).
While on the surface IT WAITS looks like your standard run-of-the-mill creature-in-the-woods feature, it does have a little more to offer.
The drama-aspects, predominant in the first half of the movie and coming back with a final twitch in the end, were something you wouldn't exactly expect in the first place from a movie like this and they were even well-developed too.
Cerina Vincent (looking good as ever) plays a troubled young ranger, Danielle, coming to terms with her personal demons from the past regarding a traumatic experience and her on-going issues with her boyfriend Justin (played by Dominic Zamprogna, who has a pleasant on-screen charisma).
The kills in this movie are pretty good and gory, and the fun stuff includes that some of the corpses tend to pop up here and there, because our demonoid creature is just a bit more cunning and devious than your average beast.Another nice touch about IT WAITS is that it's not about a bunch of people (whether it be teenagers or military folks or whatever) fighting some creature in the woods.
I would have to say this movie was a brilliant horror movie to be counted as an independent film, the script was great and i cant forget about the actors including Cerina Vincent who has to deal with all these inner demons haunting her from the past and this flesh eating native American beast that is hunting and stalking her.
And the acting was great you have to like this movie even though it doesn't have buckets of gore you could still have a strong stomach while watching the kills.
Its a great horror movie and besides Hot actress Cerina Vincent is in it.
it's worth watching i think,, the thing with horror movies is you can't take them tooo seriously,, there' not perfect and there hard to come by , so don't be so hard on this one,, it wasn't too bad.
The beautiful actress makes her character come to life, and at least as much of the story involves her struggles with her inner demons as it does her fight to the finish with the monster from the forest in which she finds herself stranded.
An effective low-budget horror film that deserves a bigger audience than it has reached so far, It Waits is efficiently written and executed and is a great showcase for the gifted Cerina Vincent.
i liked this movie.it's a bit slow at times,but it is enjoyable,for the most part.the creature isn't the most realistic i've seen,but i have seen a lot worse.there is lots of gore,so if you have a weak stomach,you might want to prepare yourself.but if you're a gore hound,you'll probably really like that aspect of it.there are no big name actors/actresses here,but i really liked the actress who played the female forest ranger.i thought she was very convincing.this won't likely be the best horror movie you ever see,but it's sure better than a lot of them out there.it has a 4.2/10 rating on this site,but i would rate it higher than that.i give It Waits a 6/10.
I had a hard time believing the very beautiful Cerina Vincent in the lead role as a park ranger, but that's not taking anything away from her performance because she does carry the film.
So many years later, in search of a good creature feature, I "legally purchased at full price a copy of the DVD and waited to have it mailed" since that's how we all watch movies in 2012 because torrenting is illegal, right?
The sappy love story between our heroine and her boyfriend is developed wayyyy too long just in order for it to end in possibly the stupidest set of decisions made in any horror movie.For a gore lover like me the movie touches on being decent in that aspect but there is definitely a sense of modesty as far as the length of the kill scenes and what the director allows us to see.
"It Waits" doesn't really explain the creature other than referencing some Indian religious relation (which i'm not sure is factual lore or not and certainly not intriguing enough to look up.)What i couldn't stand the most was the CLEARLY CONTRIVED INSERTED SOUNDTRACK featuring songs that not only don't belong in the horror movie.
But, the Canadian scenery made the entire movie viewable--for me, anyway!Certainly NOT the worst Horror flick I've watched, but I believe it had unexplored/unimplemented possibilities which could have made it great!
I found this one to be a little weaker because: spoilersThe creature is everywhere doing all sorts of killing, even pushing a jeep over, yet it can't get into the flimsy little ranger's tower?Likewise, the fact that it seemed to be toying with the main girl(Cerina Vincent of Cabin Fever fame) seemed a bit far fetched.
Finally we have character development in a low budget horror movie.
We get a whole pile of them at the beginning of the movie, then when she's whining and crying and relating the whole story to her boyfriend, we get a whole pile of them again.Oh, wait, is there supposed to be some horror aspect to this thing?
It's unfortunate, because there's some really beautiful scenery in this thing, and the setting, up high in the air in a ranger tower, could have been very effective - if it weren't housing someone who spent the whole movie whining and crying and having flashbacks to something utterly unrelated to the story at hand.The second half of the movie picks up a bit as the monster chases the girl around the woods.
One, it's one of those flicks where they purposely don't show the creature until the very end (we're talking, 20 minutes left in the movie).
The movie moves very slowly, which made my mind wander (did I mention Cerina Vincent has great legs?) And the monster looks like the younger sister of the monster from "Jeepers Creepers." "It Waits" is not a horrible movie, but don't expect to be scared out of your wits, or glued to your TV.
A young forest ranger Danielle(Cerina Vincent)uses her lonely outpost to grieve the death of her best friend.
She must face the wrath of the ruthless monster and destroy the flesh-ripping creature from hell...alone.This horror flick is better than expected and is given some credibility by being produced by Stephen J.
Danielle races back to the ranger station to wait out the night, when she goes to find the camper, she discovers that he had been killed.The plot ends nicely, and it gives off enough questions that a sequel could clear up.
Szollosi.THE STORY: A forest ranger in the Great Northwest named Danny (Cerina Vincent) assuages her guilt & grief via alcohol while alone on the job.
When her boyfriend comes to visit her in the wilderness they become increasingly aware of a creature or demonic entity that is killing off everyone in the local area and playing headgames like a cat plays with a mouse before slaying it.It dawned on me after watching "It Waits" that it combines the plots of two 1979 films -- "Alien" and "Prophecy" (not the '95 film "The Prophecy" with Christopher Walken), both of which were out that summer.
The aspects it borrows from "Alien" are obvious (BASIC PLOT SPOILER): A tall, hideous monster kills off a group of people in an isolated setting one by one; the creature's not fully shown until the ending wherein the lone female protagonist has a showdown with it.
BOTTOM LINE: "It Waits" is a must for Cerina Vincent fans and those who enjoy monster-in-the-woods flicks, or both.
So, here's my first recommendation, if you like seeing people get their thang in action, or must have a high body-count in your horror flicks, I'd check out some cool 80s stuff and avoid this, as it will disappoint you.Still, for everyone else: It Waits is that very rare thing in the horror genre, a well acted movie with a lot of thoughtful character development.
Vincent manages to effortlessly convince in what's only her second lead role (first being the decent but silly Intermedio/Dead & Dying).Now, It Waits plays out basically like this: First half, we meet Danny and her boyfriend Justin and we find out through both flashbacks and well played drama about how Danny is a troubled woman and is having trouble finding her way out of her problems, meanwhile things around them start to suggest that someone or something is out to cause some kind of menace.
If you are, you'll be dead excited by the second half, which is a crazed, adrenaline fueled tension fest as Danny faces up to the creature that has been causing chaos all over her mountain.If you don't mind your horror thoughtful, It Waits is great (and well worth the ironically long wait it took for it to come out properly) and well worth your time.
"It Waits" wasn't as bad as it could've been.**SPOILERS**While grieving for the loss of her friend, forest ranger Danny St. Claire, (Cerina Vincent) is alone at her watchtower and trying to get over it.
Not to mention that Cerina Vincent is in 90% of the shots, and wearing as low-cut a tank-top as she does in it is never a bad thing.The Bad News: It's pretty hard to figure out exactly what's going on in the movie, as it does an extremely bad job of explaining everything.
Seeing a bunch of dead bodies lying around isn't what the gore-hounds really want, and it distracts from the viewing as they do look like impressive kills at times.The Final Verdict: Had it kept in some gore and explained things a little better, this wouldn't be such a bad movie.
I saw a preview of this movie and thought it was gonna be stupid but I ended up watching it instead and was surprised how much better it was than the trailer.I read that originally the main character was supposed to be a man and don't know why they ended up using a woman, but Cerina Vincent pulled off the role nicely and Dominic Zamprogna played her male friend equally as well.
It waits was interesting right from the start and had good effects and nice atmosphere.The thunderstorm towards the end looked real and was done right.Too many times in the past in other movies they have really come across fake.I also liked how the creature wasn't shown up close enough to get a good look at first.All you see is quick glances of it.This added to the mystery and horror of it.It made it more elusive and ghostlike.
There were some parts of this film that could have been done better and some parts were not necessary but for the most part I liked this movie..
Once the creature turns up things begin to pick up although it seems to want to play games with the forest rangers & scare them although it could just as easily kill them & be done with it.
I think the gore could have been more plentiful but whats here is quite impressive.With a supposed budget of about $1,200,000 It Waits was a pretty well funded film, I have to say I'd have liked to have seen more for that sort of money.
not only was there so many stupid holes in the story, like for instance that main character hoped the lighting would set a forest fire so she would get some help.
The characters are very likable after about 20 mins of getting to know em', I liked the back story of guilt and shame for the lead girl, she is a very good actress, I am sure we will see her a lot more and a lot more of her hopefully soon.
Hunting and killing it stalks forest ranger Danielle who is coping with the fact that she was responsible for the death of her best friend.It waits reads like a great storyline and it is a good plot for a movie, I would says its just watch able, its a modern B-movie with so-so special effects and scenes which I could say where rip offs from other movies, i.e. Jeepers Creepers 1+2.
In a nutshell the movie wasn't that great, and it was disappointing to see Cerina Vincent try to out act the bad storyline, after a first class performance in Cabin Fever..
Yes this movie is bad...the only good part is that Cerina Vincent is hot...other than that....I cried when I watched this movie because it makes Jeepers Creepers look good...I watched it all the way...twice...only twice because I wanted to show my friend how bad it was.
The story then centers around a young ranger named Danielle (Vincent) stationed nearby who accidentally killed her best friend in a car accident and is slowly turning into an alcoholic due to the guilt.
It doesn't like rain but it doesn't hurt it and the creature runs around in it during the movie.
Lastly for those of us who also have seen Cabin Fever I'm sure a lot of the draw of this movie was Cerina Vincent.