Splinter

** - The opening scene of this 2008 horror/thriller flick in which a rube gas station attendant gets eaten by what appears to be a rabid porcupine is probably the highlight in what ends up being an otherwise pretty pedestrian entry in the genre. A nerdy guy obsessed with trees and his unrealistically hot girlfriend decide to spend their honeymoon camping out at an experimental oil extraction site but end up destroying their tent and instead head off to a motel to, presumably, bop each other senseless. Unfortunately for them, they are then carjacked by a recently escaped convict and his weird-looking meth-addict girlfriend. Even more unfortunately for them, the fact that they are held at gunpoint by the sweaty prison escapee and his hollow-eyed remorseless trim is probably the high point of their whole trip, as shortly thereafter they become the prey of this weird porcupine creature that hangs around the above-mentioned gas station. It’s all fairly by-the-numbers, as the tough-as-nails girlfriend turns to jell-O and has to be comforted by her weakling boyfriend who all of the sudden becomes more useful under pressure for no apparent reason. The worst part about this movie is the creature, though. It is some sort of spiny mold/fungus thing that can run really fast and ties chunks of it victims together into a hideous flesh pile as it roams around looking for heat sources (which, by the way, it can detect with unbelievable accuracy). It is never really shown very clearly on camera, which was probably a good decision on the film maker’s part as it would have been utterly laughable. By the way, this makes two movies I’ve seen in as many weeks that contain a scene of a guy attempting to chop his own arm off. Come on!