Reviews

I have been a fan of the Lovecraft mythos for over forty years and therefore being probably overly generous in this review. For brevity I will not give a synopsis as you can read that in other reviews.

It's kinda a sequel to "From Beyond" (1986) by director Stuart Gordon, but with a running time of barely over an hour. Fair warning - a Full Moon Features production (honestly don't think I've ever seen a Full Moon film which wasn't crap).

I don't mind very low budget movies, as long as they have some redeeming features, but this one has few. Honestly thought this may have been a first-time outing for the writer/director William Butler, but according to IMBD he has (at time of writing) 30 credits to his name.

The in-camera practical SFX (models,blood etc.) are pretty good considering the low budget, but there is an overuse of flashing negative film effects and the CGI effects are pretty awful. Hard to believe the visual effects in From Beyond, made over 35 years ago are FAR superior to this.

The acting is mostly sub-par, with the exception of the main character Crawford - which is so truly awful, I can't even forgive him for the incredibly dumb garbage dialogue he has to deliver. In two separate scenes when the machine is powered up he instructs the participants to "remain completely still, they can't see you if you don't move", followed immediately by "point out if you see anything". And of course everyone including himself moves .

Just to give you some scale, Michael Pare gives by far the best performance in this movie (never thought I'd ever write that).

Positves- the female characters are very attractive beauties.

Negatives (apart from previously mentioned) - the ending was abrupt and forced, maybe due to lack of funds.

Don't believe the hype from the fans that are calling this a masterpiece, they must not have seen any other movie. Absolutely nothing happens for the first 45 minutes, and then it turns into a below average humans hunting humans for sport movie, and even then it still manages to drag. Don't waste your time

I don't know why the Halo fans are giving this movie such great reviews - as a standalone movie it is (as another reviewer put it) a poor man's Starship Troopers - not that ST was a great movie itself. Mostly this movie is just plain boring. Nothing happens for the first 55 minutes - we are introduced to a group of cadets at a military academy. All the standard character clichés are here with typical tragic back-stories - the protagonist Lasky, who has a problem with authority (what's he doing at a military academy? - oh, his brother was the best cadet ever at same academy and was then killed in combat), the squad rival, the love interest, the computer hacker, the tough chick - you've seen it all before. They go through training, the protagonist nearly quits, the instructors see great potential in him if only he would realize it, etc, etc. Boring. At about the 55 min mark, the aliens attack, kill nearly everyone in a matter of minutes (apparently on the entire planet) except for said group of cadets, who mostly survive despite the fact they often stop and pause in the middle of firefights and explosions to look around dumbfounded at their fallen friends and instructors. Finally a super-soldier "MasterChief 117" - rescues the few remaining survivors. All this is presented as a flashback of the older Lasky, now a captain, after receiving a distress call from a ship named Forward Unto Dawn. There is an opening sequence featuring this vessel drifting thru space which is totally incomprehensible - I guess you'd have to know some of the Halo back-story to make sense of this bit. On the positive : effects are pretty good, performances not bad despite a lot of banal dialogue. Overall, I guess the not-too-fussy fans of the game enjoy this movie, but everyone else - don't waste your time.

... and this film is firmly on the boring side of that line. Don't believe the other reviews which state that the director slowly builds tension, he quickly bores you senseless. Nothing scary, suspenseful, or even mildly interesting happens for the first 75 minutes, unless you think a girl alone in a house is a particularly hair-raising event. In the remaining 15 minutes of the film she passes out from eating a drugged pizza, gets tied to pentagram and gets a few blood symbols drawn on her as part of a satanic ritual, then easily escapes and either kills or wounds everyone else in the process. After she has gotten away she shoots herself in the head - I think because she got some blood poured in her mouth during the ritual and therefore will obviously give birth to the spawn of Satan, either that or she finally realized what a piece of crap movie she was in. The final scene is so clichéd it's not worth mentioning. Save an hour and a half of your life and avoid this.

First of all, this review doesn't really have any "spoilers" - I could not possibly spoil this film for anyone worse than the makers already have. Although I read the series of novels by Phillip Jose Farmer (the first of which won the Hugo award for best SF novel for 1971) many,many years ago I remember enough to recognize that this film is wholly unfaithful to the books. Basic premises of the novels have changed. The protagonist of the first novel, Sir Richard Burton - an immensely interesting historical figure, has been changed to a villain and the hero is now a modern-day war correspondent named Matt (in an attempt to update the story perhaps?). Unfortunately, I couldn't care less about the new storyline of Matt's struggle to reunite himself with his vacuous blonde girlfriend.

I realize this makes no difference those of you who haven't read the books (you have nothing to compare it to, unless you've had the misfortune to see the 2003 version of Riverworld, which was also friggin' awful). What does matter is that the filmmakers have tried to cram all 5 novels into less than 3 hours of TV, with the result that it's a confusing mess with huge unexplained gaps and blue aliens popping in and out of existence willy-nilly. Also the entire project has that "low-budget Canadian" look to it (yes I am a proud Canadian but let's face it, there's no denying that look of projects filmed entirely in the woods of BC).

P.S. The Riverworld, a rather violent place, has had all the sex and violence Disneyfied - making this film suitable for family viewing, if you don't particularly like your family.

First of all, I can't believe SO many people are rating this film so highly as a great thriller when the first half of the movie is deliberately false. Remember people, it's only a good twist if it does not violate the internal logic of the film! If you spent the time to read a murder mystery and the murderer turned out to be some guy that wasn't introduced until the last page, would you be feel satisfied, or ripped-off? Unfortunately you can see the twist coming a mile away but frankly I didn't want to believe the talented David Twohey would stoop so low. Basically the first half shows numerous scenes with the Zahn/Jovovich couple wondering (to themselves) who the murderers are. Unless you are outright lying to the audience, denying them the chance to figure it out, these scenes clearly establish that Zahn/Jovovich are not the killers. Then comes the "twist" - they are in fact the killers and the filmmakers have been lying to you. Absolutely idiotic and a slap in the face to anyone who appreciates a well-crafted movie. I'd rate this lower but for the good performances of the principal actors, especially Oliphant. Rewatch "The Usual Suspects" instead.

OK, here's the spoiler : All of the writing and acting.

I am a great fan of English comedies (ie. Python, Fall & Rise of Reginald Perrin, Alexei Sayle's Stuff, Alan Partridge, Knowing Me, Knowing You, Saxondale, Fawlty Towers, The Games)(okay, last one's Aussie) - sitcoms, sketch comedy, satire, whatever - and was extremely disappointed as this was supposedly an influential series, but is in fact a load of nonsensical dreck. Badly delivered, childish, corny and extremely dated jokes - although I hesitate to call them jokes. Yeah, I get that it's supposed to be a parody of earlier television variety shows, but parodies are also supposed to be funny. This isn't.

Don't waste your time, it's about as funny as cancer.

By the way, Simon Day appears briefly a few times and is billed as Tommy Cockles, but he is not doing the (very funny) Tommy Cockles character from the Fast Show.