10 Syfy Original Horror Movies That Actually Aren't Awful
9. Mammoth
Syfy Air Date: April 2, 2006
Very few Syfy original movies can boast a nomination for a Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Award, especially in the Outstanding Special Visual Effects category. Mammoth stars The Invisible Man's Vincent Ventresca as a museum curator attempting to reel in his precocious daughter at the same time as studying a frozen wooly mammoth.
His problems increase tenfold when an alien probe that reaches earth during a meteorite shower successfully resurrects the ancient mammoth, the first step in a plan to take over the planet. As government officials of varying offices converge on Vincent's town, it is up to him to stop the suits from destroying the place in pursuit of his beloved beast.
A reanimated mammoth is a relatively believable engine of terror in the realm of made for TV movies, where one scary animal genetically crossed with another in a shady government experiment (who keeps funding these things?) is the accepted norm, and the beast does more than enough damage without being turned into a horrific hybrid.
Most Syfy original movies draw laughter in some shape or form, though where most features evoke snorts of derision or lean heavily on B-movie tropes for a giggle, Mammoth is actually genuinely funny in parts, and the minimal use of pee poor CGI means the monster is just about realistic enough to fear.