Thursday, October 21, 2010

Raptor Goes Reaping

I have haven’t watched many movies of late, why? Don’t question me! Ok, I tells. I’ve been watching the now cancelled series of Reaper.

Constipation? We have the cure.

It’s about Sam (Brett Harrison) whos’ parents sell his soul to The Devil(Ray Wise). Since The Devil now owns his soul on his 21st birthday he recruits him to bring escaped souls back to hell. The Devil obviously makes this task difficult for him so to help Sam recruits his friends Sock(Tyler Labine) and Ben Gonzalez(Rick Gonzalez, yes same last names, neat) to help in his task. Mean while he is trying to ignite a relationship with his girl-friend Andi(Missy Peregrym).

Hey it's the Scooby Doo gang. Wait, which ones the dog?

The series ran for 31 episodes and sadly was cancelled after plans to sell it to another channel fell through. I’d have to say I really was into the series by about 5 episodes in.  Brett Harrison was quite likeable as the harassed and frustrated Sam. He doesn’t portray him as looser but more of an every day guy who is stuck in a bad situation.  Ray Wise is in the perfect roll as The Devil. I mean he was made to play the conniving, manipulative and vindictive lord of all evil. Oh he does dress well too. Both Brett and Ray gave the series a good solid base but the ones that made it shine were defiantly Tyler Labine and Rick Ganzalez as Sock and Ben. Sock is an outrageously extraverted eccentric who is the guy that comes up with crazy plans to get the girls. Not always successful. He was the character that had me laughing nearly every episode.  I'd keep an eye out for this Labine character, he is going be be appearing a lot more on TV. Ben is almost the opposite being really nice and sensitive but still prone to the crazy ideas that plague his colleague. His family lies in fear of his grandmother who rules with an iron spoon. Oh he likes bunnies and has a demon girlfriend. Score! Andi, Sams lady friend, is also quite likable and hot. I think she was in a cheerleading movie. Mental note: must find cheerleading movie.



The series has some reasonable FX and creature costumes. The demons who appear reasonably often are quite the spiffy practical make up. Also the souls from hell tend to all have their individual powers such as turning invisible, exploding into fire, multiplying etc which leads to some interesting situations although the escaped souls are not always the centre of each episode.

The weakness of the show was the demon hunting was a little repetitive, especially at the start. This though decreased a lot latter in the first series when multiple story archers began to be introduced. Maybe this was a little too late to save the show. Who knows but I was really looking forward to next episodes of the series.

Reaper is a cross between Supernatural and possibly Scrubs. If this sounds good to you then check it out otherwise go QQ somewhere. I give this series a 7.5/10


No comments:

Post a Comment