Amy (Joelene Smith) has decided to move away from her aunt (Maria Caprile) in order to go to college and start her own life. She wants to be an actress, so she looks for the theater not long after getting to college. She meets Mark (Wes Deitrick), who gives her directions and is super nice to her. Once she finds the theater, she discovers that a group in the class, lead by Julie (Tanya Morton), doesn't like her at all for whatever reason. She also discovers that Mark is the teacher for the class. With Mark being the only person that is nice to Amy, and gives her the lead role in the upcoming play, she soon starts to have a crush on him. Julie discovers this and decides to play a prank on Amy. Julie writes a note to make it sound like Mark wants to meet up with her in order to fool around. Amy dresses up and shows up at Mark's house, only to be rejected by him, in a sort of mean way. Amy runs out, only to be met by a laughing Julie and crew. This causes Amy to start to spaz out, which puts her in the hospital. Amy's aunt shows up with a tiki doll that come alive and seeks revenge on those that wronged Amy.
I'm sure that Tiki will remind people of the Puppet Master films. The tiki isn't really a doll, so much as it is a wood carving, but that is what I will call it all the same. The movie opens in a sort of weird way with the tiki is helping some woman. No idea who she is or anything, and she never shows up again. I guess it was just a way to show what the tiki can do. Tiki was a low budget deal, but it suffers the most from bad acting. The plot from writer/director Ron Ford was pretty basic. It could have been better, but I didn't really have much of a problem with it. The tiki itself was a little on the silly side at first. It did start to grow on me though, and I did enjoy it. The kills were bad, and didn't always make much sense. At the same time though, they did manage to get me to laugh at some of them, so there is that. Tiki is a silly movie because of the tiki doll and the things it can supposedly do. I don't recall how far up the apartment that Amy lived in was, I want to say on the second level, but it was rather funny watching the tiki climb its way up.
Besides the tiki doll coming alive, which didn't look all that bad to me, there are some gory effects to be found. Nothing was outstanding, but I can't say it was the worse stuff to be put on film either. The acting, however, is a different story. Still not the worst out there, but it was pretty bad. Joelene Smith comes off as a shy person in the movie. I don't know that it worked for the character too much. I have nothing against the average looking girl, but again it didn't fit well here. I guess I felt that she wasn't into the role much. I can't single her out though since the whole cast was pretty much the same way.
Tiki may not be the best movie out there, but it was starting to grow on me a little bit by the end of it. I can't say that I would ever watch it again though. It has a little bit of magic to it, but the bad acting took it down. I'm not sure I would give it too much of a higher score even if the acting had been better. I wasn't mad or anything after watching it on Instant Watch, and I don't feel I would have been if I had the DVD sent to me. I probably would have been if I bought the DVD on a whim though, depending on how much I had bought it for. If you are into these types of movies, where things like a tiki doll thing come to life, might be worth the curious watch. With the acting though, I think most people will not enjoy this one.
2 out of 5 I don't even want to own a tiki!
3 comments:
How is Tiki any different from say, Chuckie?
Much, much smaller
Hm. I might toss it on the February Short-List. Sounds mediocre enough to qualify!
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