The SciFi channel has apparently fallen head over heels in love with their "original productions". Whether or not "Shapeshifter" is a SciFi original or not, it is representative of a bothersome trend...instead of trying to compete with other channels showing "classic" films or recent releases that are actually of some quality, give the viewer "original" garbage.

Along with this trend, SciFi has decided that their original movies should be R-rated, but since they want to be sensitive to the concerns of parents, they block out anything titillating (bare breasts, giving someone the finger, etc.) and leave uncut the disembowelment, chewing, decapitations, and spewing blood. Check out "Rest Stop" or "Haunted Prison" or some of their other recent flicks.

With that said, what can we say about "Shapeshifter"? I think that one thing in the script sums it all up: the screenwriter(s) actually think that the gas chambers used in executions use natural gas. That's right. They think that natural gas piped in through the usual cast iron pipes is pumped into the execution chamber.

Enough already...let's have some intelligent plotting and scripts.