Chupacabra: Dark Seas



AKA: Chupacabra Terror

After years of being called a fool by his fellow scientists, crypto-zoologist Dr. Peña has traveled to a small Caribbean island and finally managed to capture the find of a lifetime: a living, breathing Chupacabra. Sure, he lost three well-trained men in the process, but those are the types of sacrifices one makes for science.


They didn’t even make it 7 minutes into the movie before something went wrong.

And continuing with that train of thought, Peña decides to put countless more lives in jeopardy by smuggling the bloodthirsty beast onto the Regent Queen, a regional cruise ship headed back to the mainland. But further proving that the not-so-good doctor is horrible at hiring competent people to help him with his work, the two numb-nuts he tasks with loading up his priceless treasure onto the boat can’t help but take a look-see into the crate to see what they’re loading up and… Oh, would you look at that. It would seem that after spending less than 5 minutes on the ship that the angry, murderous creature is already free to roam the ship at its leisure. Surely that won’t be a problem for the passengers and crew, right?


Oh dear…

Chupacabra: Dark Seas (titled Chupacabra Terror for the DVD release) is an American monster/horror film from 2005 that was made for the SYFY channel (back when the name was still spelled correctly.) For once I actually knew what I was getting into with this Made-for-TV film, because this movie was made back when I still watched the Sci-Fi Channel, so I still remember seeing some of the adverts for it. But I didn’t actually watch it back then, because even younger me knew that all these Sci-Fi Channel originals were pretty sucky. And indeed, having now watched it, I know younger me would be pretty damn smug right now, because I can now confirm that the movie is, unsurprisingly, cheap as hell. But, it also stars two well-known actors. John Rhys-Davies, who just about everyone should recognize from the Indiana Jones movies, amongst his many, MANY other notable film and TV roles, and Giancarlo Esposito, who should also be recognized for his multiple TV and film roles, but who also may be more recognizable to some of the younger generations as “that guy in that laughing/angry meme.”


Yup, that’s the one.

So surely the film can’t be too bad, right? I mean, this movie was made while both those actors were in the middle of their already well established careers. Hell, Rhys-Davies had JUST finished with Return of the King the year prior. They’ve worked in theatre! They have awards! That has to count for something, doesn’t it?

DOESN’T IT?!?


Hint: it does not.

Judging by the film’s output, I’m going to have to go with “no”, and assume that both men just took the job so that they could get a free trip to the Turks and Caicos Islands, where I’m told much of the movie was filmed. If that’s the case, then good for them, because they sure as hell didn’t do it for the ‘art’, cause lets be real, this movie is…. Imma just be nice and say ‘rough’. And you get your first hint of that before the movie even properly starts, because anyone who non-ironically uses the Papyrus font for their title screen clearly doesn’t know what they’re doing.


And thus the movie proves that it has failed before it had even begun.

So THAT was a bad sign. But I had slightly higher hopes for the effects department when I noticed that they were actually shooting in a semi-tropical looking location. And then I saw that their monster wasn’t CGI and was actually a guy in a suit. But then those hopes were quickly dashed when I got my first good look at the monster (which happens fairly early). And honestly, I’m not sure what the hell it is, but it sure as hell doesn’t look like the standard Chupacabra descriptions. For one, it’s way too big. And for another, a Chupacabra is most frequently described as ‘reptile-like, with spines protruding from its back.” None of which can be seen here. Instead the monster looks more like someone in a Creature from the Black Lagoon wet suit wearing a repurposed pig mask. Which isn’t necessarily a ding against the suit itself, because the outfit looks pretty good and it appears they put a decent effort into it. I’m just saying it doesn’t look like any of the descriptions I’ve read about a Chupacabra.


And just what the hell are you supposed to be?

Then, to make matters worse, I noticed they CGI’d the outside of the boat. Not for every shot, mind you. The first one we see of the ship leaving port appears to be a shot of an actual, honest-to-god cruise ship. But everything after that? Fake. And not even detailed fake. It looks like they just did a rough 3D outline of the ship, added some lights where they thought they needed them to be and called it a day. I suppose when the filmmakers were still counting on everyone watching the movie to be viewing everything in the slightly fuzzy, full-screen format of yesteryear it didn’t look so bad. But honestly I would have preferred them filming a ship during the day and putting a crappy night filter over it than giving us the cruddy CGI boat.


Wait, did you guys even CGI the water? Cripes…

Then there’s the acting. It’s about on par with what one would probably expect from a Made-for-TV production. Mediocre probably sums it up best, with most of the actors putting in the bare minimum of effort just to get their paycheck. Though there are a couple exceptions to this, of course. The daughter ends up being worse than average. The wealthy older lady with the dog can be annoying at points, but ends up being pretty decent. And the idiotic robber they added for comedic effect is hamming it up WAY too much to be believable. So while the movie averages a “meh” rating in the acting department, at least the movie gives you a spectrum of ‘meh-ness’ from which to choose from.

Really, the only decent actor is Rhys-Davies, and even he can come across as if he’s overdoing it most of the time. But then again, most everyone else was so underwhelming that I can’t tell if he was actually being over-dramatic, or if his minimal amount of effort came across that way due to everyone else being so lackluster…. Hmmm… That’s something to ponder. Whatever the reason, at the very least he wasn’t making any stupid, exaggerated faces for me to make fun of, like the one Esposito sported a couple of times, so he kinda wins by default.


Though you kinda gotta laugh at how shocked he looked when his stupid-ass plan didn’t work.

The real problems though, perhaps unsurprisingly, lie in the story and writing department. And… You know, with this being a Sci-Fi Original and all, I knew it was going to be really cringy and cheesy, but some of the stuff going on was just mind-numbingly weird.

The first puzzler involves the transportation of the Chupacabra itself. Namely, why the hell was it even on a boat to begin with? And I don’t specifically mean that boat, because hauling it onto a cruise ship was stupid enough when it made WAY more sense to use something more specialized if you were going to go that route. No, what I mean is, why was this guy secretly transporting this thing to begin with? This isn’t the 1800s where you have to bring verifiable proof of whatever you found to the nearest big city and put it on display. This is the modern age with cell phones and video cameras and shit. Why wasn’t he making the people come to him? Because if I was a scientist who was researching a VERY specific creature that no one else thought existed, and I actually managed to CATCH IT, then you can bet your sweet bottom dollar I’d be taking pictures and taking video and summoning every reporter I could find within a 5,000 mile radius to come see this thing, because FUCK YOU colleagues who mocked me in grad school! Look who’s laughing now! Mwahahaha!

But I guess if he had done the sensible thing then we wouldn’t have a movie. So instead he has to bring a vicious creature on board a ship with thousands of potential victims because… reasons, I guess.


I guess they figured killing hapless tourists was more fun than killing big dudes with guns.

Then of course we’re given an ENTIRE sub-plot involving a robbery on the ship. So the government sends a US Marshal on board to figure out who the thief is. And you expect he’s really just there to be the handsome leading man with a gun, and the whole thing involving the missing money is just an excuse to have him on board and the whole thing will be forgotten once the monster breaks loose. But no, no such luck. Instead it just becomes this WHOLE thing with this moronic, feather-haired robber who, despite being a complete idiot, still manages to outsmart all these people left and right, because they are somehow dumber than he is. But of course he can’t outsmart the monster and he ends up sliced and diced. What does any of that have to do with the Chupacabra? Jack diddly. The whole thing seems to have been added solely so that the Marshal, Captain, and the Captain’s daughter can comment on his greed as he lay dying, and then sneer at him in disgust as they step over his bloody corpse. It may be the most ruthlessly shoehorned comment on morality I’ve seen in one of these cheap-ass films.




“It’s the greed that got him.”
Gee, thanks, Champ. Never would have figured that out without you.

But you still think, “Okay, well that was a bust. But surely Marshal-boy is here to save the day? Maybe woo the Captain’s blond, kinda ditzy daughter while he’s there?” And if you’re asking that question to you I say, “Eh…kinda?” He and the Captain do manage to save her once from Dr. Peña’s evil plot to use her as live bait. But after that there’s still… Wow, 20 minutes of movie left. In which time they have to figure out how to kill the creature and have their epic final confrontation with it. And let me tell you, that thing is BONKERS.



They managed to call the Marines earlier in the film, and the last one standing completely loses his rocker at the end and just starts shooting wildly all over the engine room until he catches on fire. And I guess he never learned ‘stop, drop and roll’ as a child, so he just flails around like a nutter until he dies. Then Marshal-boy gets trapped under some beams due to all the sporadic shooting, and the CAPTAIN sends his ditzy daughter to go save his ass and try to get the creature under a steam vent, cause I guess they’re graspin’ at straws to try to hurt this thing at this point.

Anyway, he sends his kid out to do the hard work, and you think “WTF is wrong with this guy, that twit is going to get mauled.” Except – Plot Twist! – that little kickboxing class they showed her teaching earlier in the film wasn’t just for show and this chick, who can’t be much more than 110 lbs sopping wet, manages to do better than 6 fully armed marines and kicks this things ass long enough for Marshal-boy to finally be useful and shoot the damn monster with the trank serum. Then it’s fire, run away, boom, “I think it’s time to retire”, the end. Roll credits. What a trip.


I’m not kidding about the kickboxing thing. She literally kicks this indestructible thing’s ass. It’s so stupid it’s great.

The most annoying part of the movie though (No, I’m not done yet. Get back here!), winds up being the Chupacabra itself. Because there is just NO consistency with this thing. Its strength varies wildly. It has no trouble being fast enough, or strong enough to take out a bunch of beefy guys wearing armor, but the little blond gal can apparently kick-box it into submission. It’s also supposed to be sucking people’s blood. The movie even goes to the trouble of explaining that its name is “goat sucker” and why it’s called that (because it kills the goats and sucks their blood.) But at no point do you ever see it doing that. It’s just slicing up all these people and maybe gnawing on them a little bit. Mostly tough it’s just killing them and leaving them for dead. The only thing you actually see it eat is the dog (sorry, animal lovers.) So beyond Fido there, it’s really not living up to its name at all, just going on a murderous rampage.


Also, WTF is going on here? Why does it sporadically have ‘twitchy ghost’ powers?

The most irritating part though, is that according to this movie, the Chupacabra is, apparently, bulletproof. People keep shooting it with no results. The Marines who board the ship even comment on their weapon’s lack of effectiveness, forcing them to switch to armor piercing rounds. Even Dr. Peña’s own notes indicate that the creature’s only vulnerable point is its neck, so regular weapons don’t work.

The only problem is, we don’t learn about that until towards the end of the film, and whoever came up with that plot point must not have bothered to tell any of the VFX personnel who worked on the first part of the film. Because long before we ever learn that little tidbit about invulnerability we see one of the ship’s crew members shoot this thing… and hit it. Like, it visibly caused damage and made the Chupacabra flinch. The only reason he didn’t keep shooting was because he ran out of shotgun shells and got offed before he could reload. So very early on we SAW it get hurt, and then suddenly nobody seemed able to repeat that process. So you’re sitting there watching this movie wondering how some rando managed to hurt it while all these other well-trained individuals have seemingly turned into incompetent Storm Troopers who can’t hit the broad side of a barn even when it’s 2 feet in front of them.


See! Apparently it CAN be hurt with regular weapons, it’s just really, REALLY hard for some reason.

Believe it or not, I’ve actually watched much worse Sci-Fi Channel movies than ‘ol Chupacabra: Dark Seas here…. But this is still pretty bad. They shot mostly on site, had an actual monster suit, limited the CGI, and used copious amounts of blood, but just about everything else is either really bad or really cheesy. So much so that not even John Rhys-Davies or Giancarlo Esposito could save it. I will give the film writers credit for having the crew arm itself very early once they knew there was something dangerous on board, and for actually letting their leading lady actually be useful and not simply dumping her in your standard ‘hopeless damsel in distress’ trope. Those were two things that were actually very nice to see, even if they did make the daughter seem kinda dumb at points. But having a couple of good points in its favor really doesn’t do anything to save the rest of the film for being…well, from being the cheesy horror blood-fest that it is. So if you’re looking for a good horror flick or, heaven forbid, a faithful Chupacabra movie, then I’m afraid you’re SOL with this movie. But if you can appreciate things like cheesiness, dumb characters and even dumber story beats, then you may still get some enjoyment out of this.

Chupacabra: Dark Seas is available on a variety of streaming services.

Chupacabra: Dark Seas is also available on DVD.

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