The Dark (1994)

Two years ago, FBA agent Buckner (James with no facial hair) saw his partner get eaten by a giant something in a cemetery. In shooting after it, Buckner also hit scientist Hunter (Stephen McHattie, a poor man's Lance Henriksen), who was hanging around his wife's grave. Hunter should have died, but some secretion from the creature helped him heal and saved his life. Buckner, of course, tells him to forget he saw anything.

Present day: Old and young gravediggers Jake and Ed notice a couple of strange goings-on in their cemetery -- like headstones collapsing into the ground, and tunnels just beneath the sod.

It just so happens that Hunter is also coming into this town. He rescues Tracy, a waitress, from some violent biker asses at the diner where she works, and what the hey, they spend the night together and she tags along with him.

Ed and Jake use the backhe to discover the giant tunnels under the earth. They call on Jake's friend Gabe, a local cop; he brings his new partner, Jessie, played by Neve Campbell just before she got big enough that she didn't need this kind of work. Gabe goes into the tunnel to explore and -- AAAAGGGGHH! Something eats him! (To be precise, an unconvincing man-in-suit rat creature.)

Everyone runs back to the main house to call it in, but Hunter and Tracy show up. Hunter holds a gun on everyone to keep them from calling in forces to destroy the creature -- he's intent on capturing it alive, before Buckner (who's also on the creature's tail) can kill it.

Somehow, Hunter manages to convince Jessie not to call for backup with a man down and two dangerous fugitives holding a gun on her. They set about to trap the creature, with Hunter using himself as live bait in a coffin. But Buckner doesn't take long to show up, and he doesn't care who he has to kill to get at the creature...

This otherwise-entertaining bit of DTV fluff has some really annoying flaws. One is the behavior of cop girl Jessie, mentioned above. The other is the creature itself: are Hunter and Buckner tracking it from cemetery to cemetery? How does it travel, by burrowing between graveyards? And shouldn't it be easy to find within a two-year span? Hunter even mentions that Buckner is a rogue agent; there's actually an FBI team trying to trap the creature instead of kill it. Wouldn't our much-vaunted Feds have gotten it by now? And why didn't Hunter call on that team to help him and protect him from Buckner?

Next annoying thing: Ed (the young gravedigger) is revealed at the start to have come from a rich family; his father wants him to learn the value of work. I thought this would actually figure into the story at some later time. Silly me. When it is revealed that Ed and Jessie have some history together, I thought, "I see -- he stopped calling her because he was embarrassed about his new job." Nope. Nothing of the kind was mentioned.

Third annoyance, and you're going to see this in every movie: Ed gets shot, but it's "just a shoulder wound." Yeah, too bad he's going to be crippled for life. Think about it: What can a bullet hit in the shoulder? Either the bone (which will irreparably screw up a complex joint), or an artery (which should lead to significant blood loss in a very short time), or the muscles (which are under so much tension in the shoulder that a bullet wound should hamper the arm's movement severely.) Ain't no such thing as "just" a shoulder wound, folks; that's a bad habit picked up from Magnum P.I.

Bottom line: Not a bad flick, if you can overlook plot annoyances and an unconvincing costume.