Alan is a poor little white boy living in the middle of nowhere with an abusive dad. Luckily, he doesn’t let his circumstances curtail his sense of entitlement, as he decides to waltz into the local black voodoo guy‘s house (picture Ken Foree with Little Richard’s hair piece) and steal a magical artifact called the Kulev Stick. He runs home and uses it to draw a picture of his abusive dad being eaten by a giant snake — and voila, it happens.
Years later, Alan is 40-ish, happily married and seemingly unconcerned that a giant maneating snake has been roaming the countryside for 30 years. He and his wife, Becky, are all kissy-face and “Have I told you today that I love you,” so you know someone’s gotta die. Sure enough, she crosses the street to get the mail and is hit by oblivious teens in a pickup truck.
The five kids — our geek hero Kelly, heroine Sam, her jerk boyfriend Curt, slutty Ashley and her dim beau Clayton — are on their way to a secluded “camp” that looks suspiciously like an abandoned crackhouse, and not one of them realizes that they ran over Becky. Upset, Alan pulls a Pumpkinhead and uses the Kulev stick to draw a pic of the teens being eaten by a snake. (Would it not work if he drew an orangutan or something?) Before you can say “lockjaw,” the snake returns to pick of the kids one by one — because attacking them all at once would make too much sense.
For some reason, the voodoo guy never came for his stick, but his son Nick (DMX) is observant — having apparently spent the last 30 years sitting on his porch scowling and sharpening his knife — and realizes that something is up. So he goes ahead and buys that black market BAZOOKA he’s been saving up for. When Alan, feeling remorse for conjuring the beast (which has an alligator’s head and scorpion’s tail — maybe because Alan is a shitty drawer?), goes to see Nick with Kelly and Sam, Nick reassures them by saying, “I’ll come when I’m needed.” You mean, like, right now? Eventually he comes to save the day, because, y’know, a brotha’s got shit to do.
DMX is the marquee name here (as indicated by the DVD cover), and although he kills the monster, he’s just a stiff supporting character who’s on screen for about 15 minutes — a limit that, judging by his frail appearance, might’ve been out of necessity. He recites each of his lines of dialogue carefully, one at a time, spaced out as if he’s being fed them through an ear piece.
With his oddball performance, CGI that makes SyFy Saturday nights look like Avatar and writing like “You drew us to death! That sucks!”, it’s surprising that there isn’t more camp value to Carnivorous. But sometimes I guess it’s harder to make a good bad move than it is to make a good good movie.
