Why do these things keep happening?
I was in the mood for a terrible, Grade Z movie — you know, the sort of thing Wild Eye Releasing puts out? — and watched one of their more recent offerings because their product description sounded like it might at least be entertaining:
“In a distant future, an archaeologist must use ancient technology in hopes of finding a way to fight back an army of alien attackers and escape the planet…”
After all, that brings to mind images of beautiful young girls with repainted super soakers shooting alien attackers wearing terrible costumes. Throw in a title which suggests some sort of Lovecraftian horror in outer space and you’ve got a great start on a goofy SOV film made in someone’s backyard for a few thousand dollars.
So, what do we get instead?
An anthology film.
A collection of random horror shorts with futuristic settings.
And the wraparound story has no connections to any of these films.
No, it’s worse than that: I don’t think they’d even picked out the films they were going to feature in this anthology at the time they shot the framing sequences. None of the comments the main character makes as she watches a series of long lost videos on an alien planet appear to have any relationship to the films we are watching.
Let’s just call it what it is:
Bait and switch.
The opening even looks like what we’re expecting from the descriptions, as a young woman (wearing a canvas duster, a one-piece bathing suit and knee-high leather boots) evades an unseen monster and enters a cave mostly covered with army surplus camouflage netting.
But then the awful truth sinks in as she finds some sort of “visual archive” and starts watching short films.
Nor are the shorts all that impressive. The first features a group of people sitting behind a folding table in someone’s backyard with a pile of guns — until the monster shows up.
The second film, involving the planet Mars, monster spiders, and futuristic TV ads for a brothel, has far better production values and even a flying “car.”
Next we get a post apocalyptic tale about an apparently supernatural monster; a story about researchers searching for the cure to a worldwide zombie plague; and a guy running from the mob taking refuge in the wrong forest.
None of these stories look as good, or as well produced, as the story that follows, which is a creepy ghost tale in a not too distant future. It all ends with a story about a woman being kidnapped and brutalized.
While back in the framing story, the girl makes comments about how unbelievable these videos are, and questions whether the mysterious lost civilization responsible ever intended them to be taken seriously.
The problem here is that there is no over-arching story, or any sense that these stories belong together. They vary enormously in theme and style.
And, let’s face it, in quality as well.
None of them are all that memorable, not even the two better produced stories. They all have different production crews and I suspect were made separately (and not for this film) and they leave little impression after you’ve seen them. My bet is that Wild Eye just gathered up whatever vaguely science fictional shorts they had and tried to turn them into a movie.
And I have to admit that it amuses me quite a bit that writer/director, Ken May has at least two other anthology films to his credit (both of them apparently rip-offs of the V.H.S. series).
I guess he’s found his niche in life.
I just wish he’d actually made the film the description claimed he’d made. I would gladly have watched that one.
Heck, I’d even have loaned him a super soaker if he needed it…
rivets on the poster 