Starring Corey Sevier, Kim Poirer. Written by Tom Berry, Matthew Hastings.
Directed by Matthew Hastings. (14A) 100 min. Opens Feb 27.
Decoys delivers its true moment of greatness somewhere in the final 15
minutes, long after its frat-dude hero Luke (Corey Sevier) has
discovered that Lilly (Stefanie von Pfetten), the bodacious blonde
he's been crushing on, is actually a nymphomaniac alien
murderess. Cornering her with a flamethrower, he reflects wistfully
on the night they spent together under the stars. She'd pointed
out the constellation Orion, none-too-subtly hinting that it was her
neck of the woods. He hadn't gotten it. Now, his expression
hardens, and then, just before he pulls the trigger, he says "belt
of Orion, huh? How's about the belt of … O-Fryin!"
It's hard not to root for Decoys, the first teen-horror film ever
set in New Brunswick. Early on, one of the characters even talks
about ducking out of a house party to catch a David Cronenberg film
festival, and while it would be happy to report that first-time
writer-director Matthew Hastings is a Cronenberg-in-waiting, it would
also be sadly, hopelessly inaccurate. His is a film devoid of
anything even approximating depth, shamelessly recycling the
killer-hottie conceit of Species, with, if such a thing is
possible, less finesse. But what Decoys has in spades is good
humour; not in the sly, Kevin Williamson manner, but rather a sort of
bashful amusement at its own totally, irredeemably superfluous
existence. (The actors, realizing they can't overcome their own
dialogue, amusingly pitch their performances somewhere past the
balcony, even in close-ups.)
So you take what you can get, which in this case is a smattering of great
and gratuitous boob shots, a few jump-out scares that will rattle
impressionable 12-year-olds, and at least one truly original scene,
in which the sweetest of the extra-terrestrial interlopers sweetly
explains her posse's world-domination plans to a virginal
victim. Her rationale is that before they'd gotten down to it,
he'd told her that he had always imagined his first time being
with someone he trusted. When pressed, she even shows him the orifice
where she hides her blood-freezing, prehensile tentacles. It's
really quite sweet.