Name: Totem
Genre: Horror
Released: 1999-09-28
Duration: 1 h 20 min
Rating: 3.2
Cast: Jason Faunt, Marissa Tait, Eric W. Edwards

I'm not entirely sure what happened to Full Moon Pictures in the late 90s. While I don't think you could ever accuse Charles Band & Co of highbrow, professional pictures, there was a genuine love for the craft there, and movies like Puppet Master & Subspecies would grow into moderately successful little franchises. By the end of the decade these projects had been replaced by rubbish Roger Corman would have raised an eyebrow at, such as today's topic, Totem.

Indeed, director David DeCoteau actually started life as a protege of Corman. He's actually got a fairly solid resume of B-Movies under his belt. Ok he's not Spielberg but I'd unknowingly seen a few of his movies and found them various stages of passable to good fun. This was apparently something he made as part of a contractual obligation and shot it in 4 days. It shows.

We open with 6 good looking young strangers who have mysteriously found themselves transported to a dilapidated cabin in the woods. They can only move so far outside before an invisible barrier stops them. We meet them through the eyes of Alma (Marissa Tait) who is first introduced to talkative Paul (Jason Faunt) who presents jock Len (Eric W. Edwards), brooding Native American Robert (Tyler Anderson), schoolgirl Tina (Alicia Lagano) and the mysterious Roz (Sacha Spencer) they argue a bit, before finding a mysterious totem pole style structure carved out of granite depicting 3 monstrous figures.

It isn't long before they find themselves embroiled in an ancient ritual designed to sacrifice them to bring the creatures on the totem back to life to destroy the world. Or something.

You see, there isn't an awful lot of plot here, not that makes any great sense anyway. It's an incredibly short movie, with under an hour of actual footage if you don't include the 2 minutes of The Vikings hilariously presented out of context. I genuinely wouldn't be entirely surprised if they had been set a remit of "Charles Band likes monsters under 3 feet tall, here's 3 puppets, make up the rest as you go"

The puppets aren't even good, and in a lot of scenes are clearly just the actor holding onto them and thrashing around. Incredibly they choose to focus up close on their faces in the (overly long) introduction, letting as know that the monsters aren't even worth waiting for.

I'm not gonna pretend the acting is good, but given that I'm not sure they weren't making lines up on the spot, I'm not sure I can hold that much of it against the young cast. I've seen Jason Faunt do quite well in the role in Power Rangers he'd go onto (seriously, it's one of the most watchable series of that) and Tait has a fairly solid resume (even if it includes the equally crap Witchhouse) and I was sure I was familiar with Edwards, but given this is his only credit, apparently not. Curiously, despite portraying a Native American, Tyler Anderson has an interesting accent that sounds more European to me. Sadly there's not enough written about him online to suss his actual heritage.

Totem does a lot of bad things, but at least it doesn't overstay its welcome, so I won't overdo it either. This is a pretty bad movie. It's rushed, cheap, doesn't make a lot of sense and generally has nothing you want to see. By all accounts the director himself acknowledges this.

The horror genre features stories that aim to elicit fear, suspense, and a sense of dread in its audience. Horror stories often explore themes related to the unknown, the supernatural, and the macabre, and they frequently evoke strong emotional reactions such as anxiety, terror, and unease.

caucasian actor playing native american character

Six people find themselves transported to a remote cabin surrounded by an invisible barrier. In a nearby graveyard, they discover an ancient, carved stone monument that they dub a totem pole.

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Jason Faunt and Marissa Tait in Totem (1999)

Totem

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