Dollar Tree Cinema: Shimmer

“Shimmer” (2021)
Starring Nichole Galicia, Kazy Tauginas, Brian Anthony Wilson and Jacques Mitchell
Written and directed by Rob Ciano
Not rated, but R-rated levels of language, disturbing images and some sexual references

One thing that's interesting about horror movies is anything can be the villain.

A werewolf? Sure. A shark? Of course. A gremlin like in that Bugs Bunny cartoon? OK.

A talking doll? I mean, yeah. A sloth? Well... I guess. People smiling? How is that... Oh, I see.

Light?

That's the killer in “Shimmer,” a 2021 release I found at Dollar Tree a while back and thought would be good to watch and write about now since we're about to spring forward. I'm not saying Daylight Saving Time is trying to kill us, but it is unpleasant and instills at least some measure of dread.

It feels like “Shimmer” writer/director Rob Ciano either figured out or knew someone who figured out how to make some unsettling effects that illustrated what the... whatever it is in this movie does to people, and the story developed around that. We see it right from the start, as a man goes into the woods to investigate a strange light moving through the trees. He assumes it's teenage trespassers, but actually finds this:

Soon, he's in the same condition, which brings in the local police and forensic scientist Dr. Thea Kait (Galicia). When Detective Kurt Blas (Tauginas) and other officers go to investigate a mysterious light in the house, they pursue... something... into the woods and one of the cops winds up dead – but not crystallized.

In between investigating with her team of forensic scientists/medical examiners, Thea goes home for a tense conversation with her husband Adam (Mitchell) about her not being home enough and how he got drunk and cheated on her with a guy. Sci-fi and horror movies rarely happen to people who aren't undergoing personal drama as well.

The next day, the first victim's wife turns to crystal and attacks the cop left behind to protect her. Those deaths seem to mostly wake up police Capt. Rose (Wilson), who wants the case solved and also for people to not go spreading stories about what's happening.

Back at the lab, the death toll rises to five when the sketchiest member of Thea's team gets a crystal through the head before winding up a pile of crystals himself. Thea starts to theorize the cause may be some sort of parasite, which doesn't sit well with Blas, nor does the fact that Rose seems to like her theory and is frustrated by the lack of progress on the case. Thea and two of her fellow scientists (the fifth guy just kind of disappears from the movie) start to experiment on the crystals, releasing some little firefly-looking things that pass right through the glass enclosure.

The other scientists are killed but Thea survives by holding up a reflective blanket and then distracting the critters with the light from her cell phone. When Rose, Blas and other officers arrive, the light critters are just gone. Rose asks Thea what she saw and when she starts to tell him... he suggests she go home and gather her thoughts. As Blas drives her home, we learn a) he's friends with Adam and was with him the night of his indiscretion and b) maybe there is or was a mutual attraction between him and Thea?

Although upset and concerned the light monster could attack her at home, Thea doesn't have Adam take their preschool-age son to his parents until the next day. Determined to show his wife she can count on him, Adam accompanies her back to the original crime scene, where they find the crystallized deer that apparently no one else noticed. Then they return home and A-Team up a trap for the light monster by taping curtains shut and using mirrors. Sure enough, it comes to their house but their efforts fail and Adam suffers burns before Thea is able to shoo the attacker away with a blanket.

After taking Adam to the hospital, Thea returns to the station where Rose questions her about a subplot I've thus far neglected to mention involving someone stealing roofies from evidence, something the cop who was killed at the initial crime scene was going to file a report about. Rose shows Thea a recording of an interrogation in which the speakers' faces and voices are obscured so we don't know Blas is the suspect,* then implies Thea might have been involved in the officer's death.

After apparently going home for a good night's sleep, Thea meets up with Blas to talk about the situation. While she's in the bathroom, a bartender spots him slipping something in her drink. Blas takes off, and the bartender calls the police.

Later, Blas shows up at Thea's house and tries to rape her – and she figures out he raped Adam after drugging him. Fortunately, Blas is dumb enough to believe she's into it, removing her bonds and allowing her to wrestle his knife away and stab him.

Soon, the light monster arrives to remind us it's supposed to be the villain here. It attacks Blas, who starts to crystallize and lunges for Thea, only to be shot – and shattered – by Adam, who checked himself out of the hospital.

Their bond of trust restored, the couple decide to set a new trap for the light monster, which is converting Blas to crystal or resting after its meal or something. When it emerges from the shards, it's a big blob of light and the couple are using other lights to distract it or something. Eventually Thea traps the light monster in a kaleidoscope/mirror contraption she built. They seal it in some kind of heavy duty plastic box and bury it.

The movie ends with a tractor driving over that spot three years later and the camera panning up. That's it, although maybe some of the light particles were floating up to the sky. I can't swear to it.

If you're still reading at this point, you won't be shocked to hear I didn't like this. I don't want to crap on people's efforts – hey, they made a movie; I'm just writing about it – but aside from some creepy atmosphere in the beginning and decent effects, “Shimmer” really doesn't work.

Horror movies aren't known for their logic, but you've at least got to distract me from noticing the most egregious lapses. Around the time the death toll reached half a dozen, shouldn't somebody have called the CDC? The FBI? Heck, the State Police? No, the sleepy captain just asks his lead forensic scientist and detective – both of whom he at some point suspects of stealing evidence and murder – to keep working on it. I understand the real reason was they didn't have the budget to bring in a large group of alphabet soup agencies, but give me some rationale in-story – like maybe all of this is happening quickly instead of at a leisurely pace where the main character frequently goes home and chills or the captain doesn't suggest the only witness to two bizarre deaths take a day to collect her thoughts.

The light monster doesn't make sense. I don't need to know what it is or where it comes from; I just need some consistency as to how it works. It can't think to go around the blanket Thea uses to defend herself at the lab, but it can track her to her house … then not show up again for 48 hours so the Blas subplot can resolve?

A lot of the dialogue – from the captain's halfhearted demands to solve the case to Adam's conversations with Thea – come across as actors reading lines rather than characters speaking. Galicia's dialogue particularly sounds listless at times and just not in keeping with the tone of the scenes.

Perhaps I'm being a bit harsh on a direct-to-video-or-streaming movie, but even my low expectations were not met and it didn't approach so-bad-it's-good territory either. It was just a collection of ideas that weren't fleshed out or executed particularly well.

* - We know.