Shadow Walkers (aka '+1') - High concept.  Awkwardly executed

‘Shadow Walkers’ (or ‘+1’ as it’s also known) is an odd little number at the best of times.  It never really seems to know what it is.  I guess the one thing everyone can agree on is that it’s a ‘B-movie.’ Therefore, most likely everyone concerned with making it knew that it was never going to be a massively commercial box office smash.  At best it might achieve ’cult status’ on DVD.

Therefore, it doesn’t have a budget and no ‘known’ actors to speak of.  It’s about a meteor that crashes into a small town in America, creating weird phenomenon amidst a local college party.  Soon the guests find things are going a little crazy and they might not make it to morning alive.  It starts off like some sort of adult-humour piece like American Pie, then it progresses into a looping version of Groundhog Day.  There’s also a fair bit of ‘gratuitous’ nudity which (judging from what I’ve read online) seems to have put a lot of people off from taking the plot seriously.

When I read that synopsis I thought it was going to have something to do with aliens.  Yet, what you get is time travel.  It could work.  And it almost does.  Without giving too much away about the plot, it tries to be a little bit different (and succeed), but then it strays into that area where it starts to become too clever for its own good.  Any film concerning time travel is going to have some major plot holes.  Some of them are just so good (I’m thinking the Terminator series and Back to the Future) that you can forgive the odd lapse in plausibility and just enjoy the ride.  However, in Shadow Walkers the questions just keep mounting up.  It’s like the writers had one idea then changed their minds half way through.  And then again about twenty minutes later.

You’ll find yourself asking quite a few questions as to why people do things and what happens to someone which hasn’t really been properly explained.  I checked online as to find out the meaning behind much of the film.  There are some good theories explaining most of it, but no one seems to be able to explain everything.

If you were left with questions after watching Prometheus, then you’ll be able to write an encyclopaedia as to what wasn’t clear in Shadow Walkers.  I didn’t hate the film.  It tries to be different, which, in a marketplace of B-movies filled with ‘found footage’ and cheap zombie movies, made a change.  I just wish it had been a little more focused.  I don’t mind not having every little detail about a story explained to me.  Sometimes it’s fun to interpret it your own way.  It’s just here they took that concept a little too far.

For fans of sci-fi B-movies only.

5/10 a hard trek, a bit like unicycling to Mordor and back