The Government was secretly funding a company that was developing the ultimate war machine - a deadly duo containing an intelligent golden retriever and his monster counter part called "the outsider". The plan was to make the dog track humans and through a psychic link the monster would follow the dog and terminate the targets. As usually, things go wrong and the monster attacks laboratory staffers and runs away in search of the dog.
"Watchers Reborn" is the fourth installment in the "Watchers" movie series. The original was based upon a book by famous horror writer Dean Koontz. After that he had seen the first "Watchers" movie, Koontz said he wouldn't be directly involved in any of the movies based on his works, although I thought it was a pretty decent 80s flick. The movie hosted a very clever dog (not just in the script, but his screen performance was totally realistic), a murderous killing machine and genre favs such as Michael Ironside and 50% of the "Corey gang" - Corey Haim.
As it looks like the producer (legendary Roger Corman) was satisfied with the result and he sequentially financed three sequels. The second one starring "Beastmaster" Mark Singer was shoddy and I even won't go into detail with "Watchers III" which was basically a Predator rip-off.
"Watchers Reborn" introduces a pair of detectives that are taking care of the crime scene generated by the monster escaping the laboratory and following the dog into a zoo. Some good gore was shown, but the scene was stolen by the appearance of one of the detectives, which was in fact legendary Luke Skywalker - Mark Hamill. I really don't remember watching him in anything other than the good ol' Star Wars. It looks like this was good, because Hamill turned out to be a mediocre performer at best. Besides the acting, his character was helmed by someone that watched too many cheap detective movies and liked all the stereotypes they hosted. His female counterpart Lisa Wilcox, who I recently watched as Alice in "A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child" was also rather mild in her role of, yet another typical character, a smart good looking scientist.
 
One of the best things in the original "Watchers" was the actual monster. The ape like creature didn't have any feelings, he was just your regular killing machine with a manic passion of tracking and destroying the dog. The sequels modified him and one of them made it into a Frankenstein type of a monster, while the other gave him an alien look. "Watchers Reborn" transform him into something much more similar to the original creature, but overall he now looked like a werewolf. I guess he would look like a mummy if they made a fifth movie...
The monster action was good, the gore elements were just fine, but I didn't like his transformation that even made him a good guy at the end. I just remembered one thing that I really need to mention. I don't like giving information about some actual scenes from the movie, but one of them can clearly show you what was the biggest problem about the script. The monster takes the female scientist and they both jump into a truck carrying oranges. While they are driving to the city, from now and then she throws oranges through the backside of the van and this way our fine detective follows the trail and comes to the rescue. C'mon, they could do better than that. Or could they?
While the movie is still better than the previous installment, I wasn't a bit impressed with it. The story in some parts of the movie was developing into something moderately interesting, but the flaws of the uninventive script writers turned it into something really bad.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE: Watchers 4
MOVIE YEAR: 1998
DIRECTOR: John Carl Buechler
WRITING CREDITS: Sean Dash, Dean R. Koontz
GENRE: Horror, Sci-Fi
CAST: Mark Hamill, Lisa Wilcox, Stephen Macht
COUNTRY: USA
RUNTIME: 90 min
RATING: 3/10
Watchers Reborn Website/IMDB Click here
Watchers Reborn Trailer Click here
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