Ogre (Unrated)

OGREat, another monster name Title
The Sci Fi Channel has taken it upon themselves to create the equivalent of the good old drive-in, Monster Of The Week event. Even though most of the viewers don't remember such things that is exactly what these flicks are. Cheep CGI has replaced cheep rubber suits or the rare Harryhausen spectacles. Now impossible monsters like the Ogre, Cyclops, and Basilisk are reviving the good old "monster movie".It's not about acting; that helps. It's not about plot. At least not original plots. It's all about 21st Century 91 minute comic books. "Show me the Monster!!!! Bring on ithe impossible stuff!"
Man against monster is the stuff of cave paintings. And that is why they are a guilty, or shameless pleasure and always have been ever since Edison first screened his version of Frankenstien in 1919.
If you cann't have fun with this stuff, change the channel and keep your crabby attitude to yourself.
Every Saturday when another one of these shows up, Forry Ackerman must smile...

Ogre on the loose
These 1-Star reviews are hilarious. What were these people expecting, "Citizen Kane"? An award-winning film? Look at the dvd cover and the name of the film "Ogre." Why would anyone even waste their time on a flick like this if they didn't at least embrace them as guilty pleasures?

Directed by Steven Monroe and written by Chuck Reeves, 2008's "Ogre" is a low-budget tv monster flick in the manner of "It Waits," "Sasquatch Hunters" and countless other Syfy movies. These films are the modern counterpart to the low-budget creature features of decades ago like "Gargoyles" (1972), "Prophecy" (1979) and the Kolchak: The Night Stalker films/tv series. You either enjoy these types of pictures or you don't. I do. As reviewer John Patrick Fischner so perfectly puts it: "Imagination and legend is... about good and evil and the power of selfless courage against impossible odds. There is nothing more heroic than man against monster."

THE PLOT: Four youths hike into rural...

not the cute green kind
Syfy movies are tricky things. They are usually made to capitalize on a trend, or to optimize searches on Google, or to confuse grandmas who are Christmas shopping for their grandchildren. It pays to be derivative, especially if the budget is relatively small, like so many Syfy movies are.

Once the original inspiration has faded, it's easy to forget why the movie was made in the first place. Ogres have been long a part of folklore before they were associated with being green and disgusting. And there's the rub - Ogre was inspired by Shrek.

That's right, Shrek. As evidenced by its tagline: No Donkey. No Fairy Tale. Just TERROR.

I have to agree. When I watched Shrek I kept thinking: You know what this movie needs? An ogre that eats people. A plague. And immortal 1800s-style Puritans who believe in magic.

You might think that a movie about a man-eating ogre would be set in a time when people believed in such things. That's part of Ogre's...

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