The movie fails to provide vital information about its world, either early enough or altogether. Without an understanding of what's happening on the screen, the initial story developments fail to make an emotional connection. What the viewer is left with is an appreciation for the darkly fantastical world and the technical prowess it would have required by the film crew to create. (Some of us will also appreciate the protagonist's beauty.)

What a difficult thing it is to review this movie. First the movie most people have seen is not the movie Clive Barker created, as the studio did the final cut without Barker's approval or even contacting him at all. So the studio (and the infamous test audience, people with no intelligence and movie or art knowledge) released what they thought ot be a summer monster movie ... The Director's cut released way later is closer to what Barker wanted, but with time, some tapes had disappeared, and Barker had moved on, so what the prognal movie should have been is a mystery. So we have Boone, a guy plagued with nightmares of monsters living in a strange city, living with his girlfriend Lori that is a singer in a bar. He wants to live a normal life and has hopes his psychiatrist will help him. To make things short, the psychiatrist is interested in the monsters and Boone gets killed but is reborn as a monster. Then "humans" to eradicate them. I never go in the subtext of the movies as I look for entertainment in watching movies. So of course here its obvious that the theme is human instinct is to fear and kill what's different, either other humans or animals. But if you see only the in this movie, you'll lose 2 hours and won't like it as the monsters and Boone will just seem stupid to explore this theme. I prefer to think most Directors / writers will write a story based on the world they live in and the knowledge they have of it and the memories they have of history, what happeded to them and their close ones. Here Barker is much more interested in creating a world and legend of monsters than really showing humanity's weaknesses. And he does it brillantly. His monster society and history is deep, the craftsmanship of the costumes is insane, and even Dekker (played by David Cronenberg) is a good character, even the priest os a good character, even Lori is a good character, and that makes a good and enjoyable movie. I even enjoyed the "theatrical cut" as at the time we didn't know it was an awkward stodio cut.

This review is of the Director's Cut which has 45 minutes of changed footage (a lot added and some removed/replaced)... The Director's cut is basically a different movie, that tells a different and much more complete story. Way more footage of the monsters in Midian... backstory on the main monsters... an ending that makes total sense. The movie that Clive Barker wanted to release, before the studio tried to turn it into a slasher flick. The story in the Director's Cut is much closer to the story in the book [Cabal]. The movie as it should have been in the theatrical release. Well worth a watch (now).