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USA / Romania 2006 90m Directed by: Abram Cox. Starring: Vincent Ventresca, Constantin Draganescu, Summer Glau, Tom Skerritt, Cole Williams, Charles Carroll, Mark Irvingsen, David Kallaway, Leila Arcieri, Marcus Lyle Brown, Andrew Peter Marin, Dan Radulescu, Karen Parden Johnson. Music by: John Dickson.
On a hot summer afternoon in the sleepy town of Blackwater, Louisiana locals exiting a retro-fitted theater excitedly watch as a meteor streaks across the sky and crashes through the roof of the local Natural History Museum. No one realizes that the meteor is actually a spaceship containing a shape-shifting life form. In order to adapt to Earth's atmosphere, the life form latches on to the first organism it comes in contact with - a partially frozen Woolly Mammoth found in the historic exhibit for which the town is famous. As a series of uncanny disasters unfold, the town quickly finds itself overrun by the alien-possessed mammoth. Local authorities and Government Investigators join forces with Frank Abernathy, the Museum Curator, and his father Simon, a B-Movie enthusiast to bring down the mighty mammoth.
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Mammoth is set the town of Blackwater in Louisiana where Dr. Frank Abernathy (Vincent Ventresca) works at the local museum, he is currently examining the remains of a huge Mammoth frozen in a block of ice. The Mammoth is currently being prepared for exhibition, while drilling into the ice Frank comes across a strange blue substance which sends out some sort of homing signal into space which reaches a flying saucer which releases a probe which heads towards Earth & crash lands in the museum. The Mammoth is brought back to life by an alien life-force & needs to feed on people's life-force to survive. So there's a alien possessed zombie Mammoth running around Blackwater taking people's life essence to stay alive, in come Government agents Powers (Leila Arcieri) & Whitaker (Marcus Lyle Brown) who ask for Abernathy's help as if they can't kill the Mammoth the Government will drop a bomb on Blackwater destroying the whole town & everyone in it...
This made-for-TV Sci-Fi Channel original was co-executive produced, co-written & directed by Tim Cox & is pretty much like any other low budget creature feature flick that the Sci-Fi Channel seem to pump out endlessly. The script by Cox, Brook Durham & Sean Keller definitely tries for comedy & laughs as opposed to horror & scares. Unfortunately it's a spectacularly unfunny film in my opinion, in fact there wasn't one single occasion where I even smiled much less laughed. The film has a decent pace about it but it's just so silly & full of holes that I just didn't care about anything going on or who it was happening to. The character's are pretty poor & clichéd, the man who spends more time on his job than with his family, the resentful daughter, two shameless Men in Black (1997) rip-off secret Governemnt agents who dress in black suits & carry alien guns, the small town Sheriff & the daughter's boyfriend who the father doesn't like. They are all cardboard cutout clichéd character's whom you just cannot care for in the slightest. The actual story isn't that good either, I mean an alien possessed Mammoth could have been fun but the whole film is so routine, dull & somewhat random it isn't. For instance at the end when they set the trap for the Mammoth in the huge factory they don't lure the Mammoth there it just randomly shows up at just the right time, the Mammoth hides out in the woods for most of the film & again just turns up randomly on occasionally. I don't know, I've seen loads of these Sci-Fi Channel originals & Mammoth isn't anything special, in fact I didn't really like it at all.
Director Cox films with competence but not much else, the opening sequence with the alien space probe energetically whizzing through space is quite fun I suppose but otherwise Mammoth is fairly forgettable in all departments. The CGI computer effects are average, they aren't brilliant but I've seen worse. There's no gore whatsoever, in fact I can't remember a single drop of blood in it. It's not scary & there's no tension either, a pretty dull & forgettable way to pass 90 odd minutes. There are several references to other films here, the worst being a send up of a scene in Jurassic Park (1993) where the two kids see the water in a clear plastic cup rippling as the T-Rex approaches, here in Mammoth instead of just clear water in the cup an old guy puts his false teeth in & as the Mammoth approaches the water with the teeth starts to shake. Thats the sort of thing the makers of Mammoth considers funny.
With a supposed budget of about $2,300,000 one has to say this is reasonably well made but utterly forgettable. Set in America Mammoth was partly filmed in Bucharest in Romania. The acting isn't anything special, again competent but forgettable. Tom 'I was in the original Alien' Skerritt is the 'name' actor although not much of a name.
Mammoth isn't a film that I liked, it rip-off lots of other much better films & considering it's a comedy it's spectacularly unfunny. Not a film I would recommend or want to watch again.
Review by Paul Andrews from the Internet Movie Database.