Then we meet our principal characters, yet another group of bland stereotypes that have flown out to an empty house on this island for a weekend of partying. You got two brothers, Matt, a pre-med student, and John, an irresponsible jerk, who have this bipolar sibling rivalry going on where one minute they're about to go at it and the next they're perfectly cool with one another. Matt's dating Nicki (Michelle Rodriguez, in a rare performance where she's plays an actual girly girl as opposed to the butch tough chick she's typecast as), who I think they established used to date John, which I believe was a main source of their sporadic family tensions. There's also a blonde chick, Sara, who is just sort of there to fill the role somewhat similar to Jordan Ladd in Cabin Fever. And finally, ugh, we have Noah, the token black guy who talks and acts precisely the way spoof movies like NOT ANOTHER TEEN MOVIE parody the token black character behaving. There really isn't anything wrong with the acting; they're all just yawn-inducing people. I just didn't care about these characters enough to root for them to live or dislike them enough to want to see them die. Even once the dogs go on the prowl the only thing first time director Nicholas Mastandrea succeeds in generating is apathy.

It certainly doesn't help that the majority of their situations and dialogue involving these characters during the first dog-free half hour made me wonder if I was actually watching some CW Network teen drama with the promise that these people will later be savagely mauled by super attack dogs. These people are all supposed to be of early-to-mid 20's college age yet they constantly talk about the good old days as if they were undergoing some sort of THE BIG CHILL-style mid-life crisis. By the time the killer canines finally go on the attack I was more than ready to see these people get ripped to shreds by dogs. On second thought, I ended up not really caring all that much about that aspect of the film either.

Sara takes in a stray puppy they happen upon, but later gets bitten by the momma doggy as a precursor of things to come. They just chalk that incident up to an angry parent protecting her young, unaware that soon genetically engineered attack dogs will be looking to turn them into dog food. Sara will start complaining of not feeling good, but the notion of the dog bites having an affect on people goes nowhere other than occasional complaints of feeling wonky. The worry of possibly being infected with some sort of virus is talked up but never really played up. Not following through on potentially intriguing set-ups is another problem plaguing the script.

But the script does do a heck of a job establishing stuff during the first half hour that'll come into play later on: the zip line that characters can repel across, the dark basement where the fuse box is (and it blows a fuse on a regular basis), the old car in the barn, the brother with the bow & arrow, etc. If they talk about it long enough or have the camera focus on it long enough then you better believe it'll factor into the proceedings before it's over.

The guy who lost his girlfriend in the opening sequence suddenly pops up just long enough to scare everyone by being all bloody and babbling how "the dogs don't want you here" before the dogs show up to finish the job. That's when the dog attacks finally kick into high gear and yet outside of a few isolated jump scare moments, the tension just isn't there because, again, you've got no reason to care about these people. There's a couple of good moments where the dogs jump out and ambush people and seeing a character having to out swim the dogs makes for a fun scene, but if you've ever seen a dog trainer demonstrating attack dogs in action then you know what to expect from the attack scenes, just toss in some fake blood. The dogs themselves never come across anywhere near as menacing as the film wanted them to (None of these dogs hold a candle to Cujo in the scary killer dog department) and the moments where the characters kill the dogs prove far more entertaining than the other way around. We also never even get a good explanation as to why the dogs are the way they are aside from some vague talk about an abandoned facility on the island and an outbreak of rabies that occurred there.

Dogs are very fast animals yet somehow the people in this film almost always manage to outrun them, even the people with debilitating leg injuries. Nikki will quickly suffer a leg wound of her own from a stray arrow meant for an attacking dog. She'll be briefly hobbled by this serious wound whenever the filmmakers decide to remind us she's injured. Otherwise, she's running and jumping about no worse for wear.

I would say that the film ends on a sour note with a real eye-roller of a final shot, but given the film's complete lack of imagination, it's actually a rather fitting climax.