C.H.U.D.

If you've never heard of this movie, or you have but have never seen it, take a look at the poster. Now, know that C.H.U.D. stands for "cannibalistic humanoid underground dweller". You've got a monster peeking out of a manhole cover, and a city skyline behind it. You have a presumption of how this movie's gonna go, right? Trust me. You're very, very wrong. Instead, let me give you the rundown: - There's a photographer character, played by John Heard. He used to be a huge fashion photog. He quit his job, resurfaced six months later with a photojournalistic piece on the homeless, and then ... went back to fashion photography. Specifically, his model girlfriend, who is trying to get her big break. Oh, and she's pregnant. - There's a guy who, we're told, runs a soup kitchen (played by Daniel Stern), but he looks as disheveled and unwashed as the homeless people he serves. He also watches over some homeless people who live in New York's underground. Because that's a thing. And he called the cops a couple weeks ago about some missing homeless people. - There's a journalist following around the photog, because ... reasons. - There's a captain whose wife has gone missing. He's not allowed to investigate because the chief of police is forcing him to drop the investigation. Seems there's almost a dozen missing persons reported in and around a certain area, but they can't investigate because blah blah blah the papers. - And there's an annual EPA investigation of the sewers and underground tunnels which is scheduled to last a week, but has now been going on for FOUR weeks. Got all that? You're sitting there wondering "why is there all this side-plot when this is about subterranean monsters?", and to you I say "beats the hell out of me". They barely register in it. They're a byproduct, both in the plot (involving a cover-up by a nuclear regulatory body, or so you're led to think, in a pointless late-movie twist), and of the movie itself. The movie is so concerned with all these subplots, it spends more time negotiating these characters into each others' paths than it does moving along its storyline. Hell, the two biggest actors in the movie don't meet until there's 20 minutes left. And on top of ALL THAT, there's how this nuclear regulatory guy is able to boss around the police and keep them from doing their jobs because he says so. I know that Three Mile Island and Love Canal weren't all that far off in the rear view, but this movie's paranoiac fear of nuclear power and the effects of radiation reeks of 80's fear-mongering similar to the Satanic Panic. I signed up for an 80's monster movie, and I got Silkwood Meets The Hideous Sun Demon. The editing is a confusing mess; two scenes with big meetings happen concurrently, so the movie cuts back and forth between the two meetings, killing any tension. A scene early on ends, cuts to a guy in the street playing bongos on the cab lights of a taxi for A SECOND AND A HALF, then cuts away to the next scene. WHAT IS MOVIE. HOW AND WHY ARE YOU THIS WAY. How is it you know how to hide the monster in the dark and keep the reveal for later in the movie, but make no attempts to build up tension when they're not on screen? And the ending. Dear God the ending. I was so looking forward to this thing stopping, because I was so bored and confused and lulled into a stupor, but the ending SOLVES NOTHING. THE C.H.U.D.'S SURVIVE. You still have a horde of irradiated monsters in the sewers attacking and murdering people (and potentially creating new ones with their bite? That's not clarified, but it's implied), and the lead policeman on the case is now dead. WHAT EVEN. Look, the monster make-up is well done. And the two name actors are good. NYC is presented in a warts-and-all way, not glitzed up and made to look like Oz without the green tint. These are positives. But the ham-handed messaging, the meandering plot, editing done with a weed-whacker, a script that is somehow over-stuffed with side-plots but no strong primary story, a B-villain that goes from glib corporate asshole to deranged murderer in literally three seconds, almost every kill is "dragged off screen" and you only see some aftermath much later ... you're trying too hard, C.H.U.D. You're C.H.U.D. Stay in your lane. Monsters, blood, that's all you should be doing.