Pete’s Peek | Billy Zane in Surviving Evil | Movie Talk | What's on TV

On a tiny island in the Philippines, a British documentary crew arrive to shoot a jungle special. Billy Zane (Titanic) plays cocksure survival-skills expert Seb, while Natalie Mendoza (The Descent) is Chill, the crew’s island guide.

But the island is also home to the Aswang, mythical shape-shifting creatures that crave human flesh and the blood of pregnant women. When one of the TV crew, Phoebe (Hex's Christina Cole – catch her in Doghouse, out on DVD on 12 October), discovers she’s with child, it’s a race against time to get off the island – alive.

Surviving Evil is more like surviving boredom. You have to wade through 50-minutes of scene padding and script drivel before anything happens. Finally, the winged vampire creatures appear and massacre the men-folk – including Billy Zane. Why he’s in this z-grade nonsense is anybody’s guess, but he really should fire his agent.

Anyhow, the creatures – actually life-size versions of that scary Zuni doll in 1975’s Trilogy of Terror – want to impregnate the girls. But this really isn’t explored, just hinted at in a scene set in a tribal pre-natal clinic, where the women sport bloated bellies with nasty veins running through them. There’s only one good shot in this complete waste of celluloid – the winged creatures setting off like the flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz.

Released 2 October (in selected UK cinemas) Released 5 October (on DVD) http://youtube.com/v/6GFegPlFBso