Okay, time for a confession. It's possible that things could get a little sketchy over the next month or so. As far as this "watching a horror movie every day" thing goes, I feel like I've handled things pretty well - vacations, holidays, funerals, goddamned housework (I was out fertilizing the lawn for a couple of hours yesterday). But perhaps my biggest challenge started today - the 2015 NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs. I am an avid Wild fan without cable, so I need to get out of the house to watch my beloved team (hopefully) go deep in the playoffs. Which means a bar. Which means being out late and getting pretty drunk. I mean, I don't want to be *rude* to the bar and just watch their TV without ordering anything, you know? Which means it's hard to watch a movie. So we'll see what happens. I was pretty stoked after watching the Wild go up 1-0 in their series against the Blues, but it has kind of made watching Muckman a blur. So, sorry if this is haphazard.
Anyways, I remember pretty much liking Muckman. It's definitely a low-budget affair (imdb says $500.00 - not sure if I believe that), but it's got an okay story, a good sense of humor, and likable enough leads.
Muckman is about Mickey O'Hara, failed TV host of a Monster Hunters-ish show called "Creature Seekers." O'Hara's reputation (along with that of his star reporter Asia Buchanan) has been irrevocably damaged when a live broadcast of "Creature Seekers" outed them as fakes. (Why you would have a live edition of a monster show with an uncoordinated man-in-suit monster is beyond me, but whatever.) O'Hara has begged for one last chance, and he thinks they have some really good information on finding the Muckman - basically a swamp-bigfoot deep in the woods somewhere in rural Pennsylvania. O'Hara and Buchanan have put together a crew of four: a driver, a PA, a cameraman, and a sound man. They all head out to the woods to meet a couple of local hicks and search for the Muckman. Little does the crew know that O'Hara and Buchanan have ensured that they will succeed by rigging up a fake Muckman. Little does ANYONE know that the *real* Muckman is out there... and he is pissed.
Muckman is the kind of indie horror that focuses more on laughs than it does scares - it's certainly more of a comedy than a horror film. There are a lot of bad indie horror-comedies out there, and Muckman is slightly above average in that respect. Yes, there are a lot of jokes that land with a thud (the obsession with bodily functions, for instance), but enough of the humor works to keep things... not boring? I say that because exciting would be overselling things considerably. But it's enough to keep you occupied, so Muckman at least passes that very basic test.
The supporting cast is either very bland and forgettable or really annoying. Sticking with bad horror comedy conventions, several of the characters are nothing but over-exaggerated, one-note stereotypes (the SUPER bitchy reporter, the ultra-hickish mountain men, the mafioso television exec). They never resemble actual people in the least, so the stakes stay pretty low (i.e. you don't care if they live or die). Luckily, our hero is pretty solid. Alison Whitney turns in a good performance as Billie, the driver of the RV that carts our TV crew around. I'm not sure if it's the script or the actor (probably a bit of both), but Billie is the only character who comes across as a real, normal person. So it's good that she's the one that we spend the most time with.
The horror elements of Muckman are pretty iffy. The (real) monster design/costume is all right, but it seems to be where the majority of the budget was spent. The other effects are Halloween store caliber. There is a nice little stop-motion bit at the very end, and while it's kind of throwback-cool, it is pretty meaningless in terms of the overall story.
So there are definitely some annoying things about Muckman. But it's hard to hold a grudge against it. It's mostly fun, never drags too badly, and it's heart is in the right place. Which honestly counts for a lot. If you can swing the kind of dopey indie stuff:
I would probably recommend this film.
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