THIS film lacks atmosphere, intrigue and adventure and that one element that all horror films should have - something to scare the audience.

Edward Carnby (Christian Slater) is a paranormal investigator. As a child, Carnby lost his parents and was sent to an orphanage.

He is one of 20 of the unfortunate waifs who was experimented on by a mad scientist.

The experiments involved making the little ones swallow some evil centipede type creatures, (which will for the rest of this review be referred to as "ECs"), which fused themselves to the orphans windpipes.

Luckily (depending on how you view it) Carnby later has a terrible electric shock which kills the EC in his body but years later the others implanted in his orphan friends decide to come out to play.

The ECs are in fact the minions of a much scarier lizard type creature which turned up after an ancient American civilisation forgot to close a portal between our world and a very bad world. Whoops!

Lizard thing lay dormant until Carnby started unearthing ancient artefacts from this lost civilisation. My advice - stop unearthing the damn things!

I would rather be alone in the dark with one of the ECs than have to sit through this absolute drivel a second time.

HC