Old people should be herded up, shoved into huge industrial size grinders and the pulp used to create cheap and attractive paving products for use in outdoor home entertainment areas.

“Oh darling, I love what you’ve done to your yard! Are those sandstone pavers?�
“No, they’re actually the remains of the Brunswick over-65 Bowls team. Look marvellous, don’t they?�

If we don’t do this, then we run the very real risk of the senile old bastards figuring out a way to do us in first. Old people don’t serve any good or present any kind of benefit to society. They don’t spend their money as freely as young people, they drive slower than young people, they claim more benefits and drain more resources from government spending than young people, they smell like death, they dye their hair blue, they’re cranky, they like prunes and they’re well past their use-by date.

And if The Glow teaches us anything else, it’s that they look stupid in tracksuits. Dean Cain should have been alerted to something sinister going on, when he is befriended by a bunch of trackydack outfitted old fogeys in a park after being mugged.

Eek! A RAT! KILL IT! Oh, sorry, it's just Portia de Rossi... KILL IT!

They offer to help him, and he goes back to their apartment building to call his wife. Before you know it, the geezers have offered to rent them one of the apartments in the building they own, so in move Cain and his stick figure wife (Portia de Rossi). Before long, strange things start happening, Portia starts to freak out about missing friends and the geriatrics start acting weird about their basement.

So ignoring common sense, Cain and de Rossi don’t move out, because gosh darn it, the old people couldn’t be doing anything wrong, could they? “LEAVE NOW! RUN!� I scream at the television, stunned that anyone could be so stupid as to not see the obvious. “They’re old people, they’re EVIL! Aiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeee!! Ruuuuuuuun!�

But in all fairness, the conniving old husks act like an extremely nice bunch, and they offer up health advice and financial aid to our protagonists, so that’s why Cain can’t believe his wife is acting so strange and suspects something foul. But it becomes extremely obvious that the the oldies are just fattening the lambs for the slaughter (and Portia looks like she needs a good steak thrown down her gob), but with Cain finding it hard to let go of his nice guy Clark Kent bit, you just know they’re doomed.

Needless to say, they don’t run to safety. The healthy old codgers would probably outrun them anyway and pester them to death about making sure they have enough money saved away for their retirement or about how they used to walk 900 miles through snow to get to work and how they were so poor they used to eat coal for dinner.

As a movie, this struggles to escape the 'movie of the week' mould it was made from. There are plot holes which are glaring and sloppy and the stupidity of our main characters is a little much to bear when you consider they want us to believe they are an intelligent young couple with professional careers and their own business.

However, where this film succeeds is as a cautionary tale about the deceptive evils of those amongst us in their twilight years. In this respect, let The Glow serve as a warning of the true evils that await us in the shopping aisles of our local supermarkets come Pensioner Discount day.

Made for television (they even left on the captions logo at the start) and with production values which generally look every inch like it, the transfer is pretty good, but the picture isn’t always great. Detail makes a pretty big drop off into the darker regions, and the many shadowy areas are fairly impenetrable and flat. Colours are nice, sometimes a little warm and revealing blotchy complexions on the cast, noticeably more on Cain’s face. Couldn't they have used some makeup or something?

A Dolby Digital 5.1 audiotrack is probably a bit of overkill for this DVD, and it doesn’t really call for it or use it to its full advantage, not that there’s a lot of opportunity for it to shine anyway. Everything is about as clear and bright as you like, you won’t miss a word spoken, the effects work is subtle in a TV movie way but it's all a bit ho-hum, just like the film.

This is a rental release only, and the DVD doesn't have any bonus material.

I can't imagine you're going to be too happy with paying six bucks for this renter, unless there's absolutely nothing else on the shelf at your local rental store. Even then, wait until they have a "20 DVDs for $10" special or something to lessen the pain.