Despite such ill omens, Shadowbuilder is a modestly effective little film. It has an intriguingly original monster – a demon that can only live in shadows and is burnt by light. The creature itself, seemingly chiselled out of obsidian, is well conceived and its final demonic transformation impressive. And there are a number of imaginative set-pieces with it coming after victims:– a body shattering into charred pieces upon being exposed to sunlight in the morgue and then reconstituting as a figure of shadows and attacking the coroner; the priest’s confrontation with it, he causing it to explode into flames with his electric lamp before the creature cuts the power supply leaving him vulnerable; a group of people passing through the woods unaware the creature is hiding in a pipe and its’ hand bursting into flame as it reaches out to touch someone who comes near but encounters sunlight instead.

The lead actor is Michael Rooker, an actor who plays usually plays thugs in films and was of course the title character in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) and the husband in Sea of Love (1989). Rooker is an interesting actor – he seems beefy and to radiate an emotional hostility – if you met one of the characters he usually plays in real life you met might assume he was a wife-beater or some such. In an intriguing piece of casting, Rooker plays a priest here, one where he charges in with an action movie moral certainty while also radiating a harsh hostility. Genre regular Tony Todd of Candyman (1992) fame is wasted in a minor performance as a crazy recluse.