Reviews

Spoilers ahead.

Seriously. What is this. I don't even.... Are space squids supposed to be scary now? The movie is about a soul sample collected from Mars which contains alien life. Which is then flown on the mind-bendingly long journey to the ISS (why couldn't whatever machine they had on the Martian surface simply do it?) after the ISS "catches" the capsule from Mars (which is huge for a soil sample container) the organism continues to grow. In a glove box. They are handling alien life, which they have no idea about; in a glove box.

Long story short, it breeches containment and despite being seen as a simple creature that only wants to live by the ISSS astronauts, it outsmarts them at every turn. Right down to piloting an escape capsule to earth and perfectly controlling the landing sequence.

However this thing is a space squid. It has no bones. Even though it made it to earth it would be as weak as a jellyfish. Maybe not a threat to mankind, but to sea creatures and judging by how easily it is repeatedly isolated (and freed by bad luck) it would easily be caught on earth and killed.

I assumed as it started life as a single cell it would be something to do with an alien disease. I was wrong. Squids in space are more tangible.

I guess that's why it was on Netflix.

Saw it on Netflix, which has been almost completely devoid of good movies and TV right now (even cancelling decent shows like Daredevil), read the synopsis and was interested, then read "starring Nicholas Cage, 2017" and knew it would be another of those F movies that he was roped into acting in as he landed himself $13m in debt. Gave it a go thinking "hey maybe it's so bad it's good", everything about it is cheap and shoddy; I don't even think the budget has been disclosed yet. I have to say that the best actor in it was the child; it's a pity to see his future acting career marred by the poor and rigid performance of Nick. At least the "I wish I wasn't here" look on his face throughout was genuine, I wouldn't want to be dancing along to the tune of that script. As for the ending, it's a joke. Spoilers ahead: The child's (adoptive; she killed the real mother during a famine as she was about to sell the kid for meat, in "an accident" (you know, those "accidents" where you murder someone) and probably sold her as meat, or are her), though throughout Nick's character seems fine with her stealing the identity of the woman she murdered, despite having been her lover (This is only revealed towards the end, though little Nicky doesn't react one bit to it) then cut to the last ten minutes, Nick's new lover/the adoptive mother of the boy is shot and killed by the film's main antagonist, who then threatens to kill the boy (while Nick is unarmed and outgunned five to one), but despite the boy shooting said film's.main antagonist's eye out, then mocking him for getting a glass eye and escaping unharmed, the child is let go. Seconds later the main.antagonist (who was also Nick's character's best friend) shoots Nick in the head, the boy runs back and pelts the 5 man death squad with stones. They probably would have no issue shooting a child especially considering that child shot out their leader's eye and they're effectively in the new-US SS and have killed "muh seven million people" in one camp called "new Eden" (EvE online much?) using (you guessed it) gas chambers and crematoriums used to.kill people who... Weren't "productive" enough Even though the first person supposed to be sent to said supershoah deathcamp was managing to afford a motel room and the second pair (the mother and son) managed to subsist on a farm and managed to look fairly healthy) as well as the boy attending school and playing the starring role in a (starched stiff) school recital that he had been "practicing for months for" so it's hardly a deathcamp for slackers. Anyway as the child is pelting the group with rocks (and they calmly sit there and take the rock-pelting, telling him "I told you to run") just for the four of the five to be shot dead by a well encamped sniper while the last guy simply runs away at walking pace. After the boy is taken in by the mysterious group who "killed the bad guys" he is told they were waiting a week on him. Couldn't they have saved his adoptive mother? Couldn't they have saved his father (Nick cage)? It's not like they had a whole week's notice or anything.

After that a flash drive with a video of Nick (despite being quoted as "a rising star" in his organisation (the humanity bureau) saying "new Eden is a death camp on TV" everyone believes him (I assume they also got the plans, but this is not made clear), after that it cuts to angry mobs rioting against the people in the cities; in a revolution, which would have happened decades ago since living conditions are so poor. Cut to credits.

It wasn't so bad it was good, it was just terrible.

*Contains some spoilers* I genuinely liked the first few episodes of this series. They seemed well written, if somewhat directed towards a younger audience, but I loved Dr Who for years; until they started involving politics and sexuality in almost every episode so being geared towards a "younger teen" audience is okay for me. What really killed it... No, murdered it was the acting/scripting done by Dr Smith anyone over the age of eleven could realise she was manipiulating you after she 'moves in' with the Robinson family. Sorry but that sugar laced with sacharrin attitude wouldn't even fool a child as clever as will, never mind the adults. What also wrecked it was the huge radio blackout in episodes one through three, after which everyone seems to be within a few miles and radio range of each other's Jupiter spacecraft. How they have extremely advanced spacecraft, an abundance of EVA suits, helium balloons with a gantry which allows the operator to reach near space altitudes but not a tiny little drone which can be programmed to fly and send out an SOS completely eludes me, instead people have to rely on (even now) obsolete light based flares. Speaking of helium balloons, if Maureen knew the mothership (Revenant?) would be in orbit while she was almost in space on that Red Bull inspired balloon ride why didn't she try to get a radio signal sent from there? I mean, even if the ship lost the dish that let it pick up ground based transmissions; with some luck the radio operator on-board could either pick up on her radio signal or an automated beacon left after we assume she parachuted to the ground, unless she managed to descend with amazing precision to be back within walking distance of her 'chariot' as the planet rotated on it's axis; which due to there being a day/night cycle we can assume it is doing. Though science aside, Dr Smith really ruined it for me. I won't complain about the token black daughter, that is at least plausible; though it brings Maureen into question when she wants everyone to stick together but is constantly reminded about how bad a husband John was via flashback despite agreeing to marry her and I assume take on the responsibility of supporting a child that wasn't his (amongst other children of his own) with his (probably, considering his training) dangerous job away from home. But I digress, 'Doctor Smith' really ruined it for me, even Helen Keller could see through her sickly sweet attitude and from taking to some of the fifty to one hundred people on the planet (or perhaps their own family; what a chore!) they would easily smell a rat. Even Will, for his age seems well educated enough to tell that something is wrong and children are often better at this than adults and a small, tight knit family would likely instantly see through 'Doctor Smith's' lies after rescuing her and meeting Don West for the first time. "I was frightened so I lied but I'm a psychologist so you can tell me anything!" only gets one so far.

Contains plenty of spoilers

Most of the 'what' moments have been explained, though despite those the movie reeks of neo-leftist propaganda, it didn't even take me to watch the movie to catch onto that one, the first two minutes said it all "sponsored by the blah blah blah of cultural arts" and other special thanks that would indicate nobody expected this movie. One so full of gaping plot holes especially the "we have this experimental new gas that should cool the world down if sprayed into the upper atmosphere because global warming is just _that bad_ in 2014, no time to see if it has any negative effects" (though all the 'frozen' scenes seem to show that there was no desertification and no massive pressure to rush ahead), I mean why not carry out small scale trials first. An experimental trial gone wrong would have been a much more believable premise than "we're going to spray this into the upper atmosphere of 72 countries at the same time, you know; because we can". Along with that we have people talking about how they ate people's babies but are completely disgusted when they find out their mystery protein bars are made from an abundant and never- ending supply of roaches. As well as "we have to thin the population by having riots riots every few years that almost completely deplete our ammunition rather than having people sterilised (which would be extremely simple considering Wonka, or William or Whatever his name is controls the food supply), die due to a 'small mechanical failure' and many other things which don't tend to provoke all out revolution. The art director deserves praise which is why it gets more than one star, but other than that it gets silly fast.

This is a blow by blow review though the first hour is basically the silliest 'fast zombie' movie I've ever seen. The protagonist, who is barely 20 and has a weak, slender build later manages to overpower a soldier armed with an l86(a2?), that's right, he manages to push the barrel up, disarm the soldier (who I'd assume is spec ops and would instantly go for his sidearm or knife), wrestle him to the floor (despite being about half his weight) then strangle him to death then strangle him to death, then runs off ignoring the fact that there's a rifle and lying on the floor right beside him. To summarise the first hour of the movie, this boy (and I mean it when I say it) wakes up on a beach with amnesia (overused) and runs after two people, he shouts for them to wait and despite the infected only really screaming comically running in this the guy out of the two attacks him anyway and then subsequently gets killed. He and the girlfriend? Of dead guy run back to a house filled with hipsters and one self proclaimed hard lad who won't shut up about his biceps. Eventually his (sister? seriously none of this is telegraphed at all to the audience, you're left to assume and hope you're right) somehow (maybe I'll find out in the last half hour of this movie) gets infected and after being taped up, then freed by her brother? Runs around the house trying to kill everyone until they throw her out a window. Now the option of leaving the city and going out to a house in the country (rather than sitting drinking beer until you pass out while playing nice loud music in the middle of a zombie infested city, throwing food at each other and generally getting on like zombie food rather than 'survivors') was on the table in the first 20 minutes but "it's a bit of a hike" despite the roads being filled with cars the only time they leave the house is when they're starving, to go to a supermarket half a mile away when there are houses all around for looting, even when the protagonist takes a rucksack of food off a random dead girl he's scolded with "don't do that, it isn't right" well gee, not like it's zombie apocalypse. It's also worth mentioning that the cameraman is terrible and doesn't seem to understand depth of field, for example; when two people are talking one will be in focus and the other will be horribly blurry. Maybe they wanted this 'unique art- style' but you use depth of field to isolate a character or characters, when there's a dialogue of two people, both should be in focus. So, the hipster squad; chased by a wholly inept military who decide to use a sonic device to lure the zombies out to chase the hipster team down (yet don't seem to use any military tactics like staggered reloads so everyone ends up out of ammo at the same time) or on their fallback position they hadn't rigged any clay more (this whole spelling correction thing drives me crazy when using actual words!) mines prior so naturally the soldier's 'cunning plan' (reminds me of the 'cunning plans' in Blackadder) completely backfires and most, if not all of them get eaten, when they could have just fallen back and flipped a switch. They have Chinooks, they have some expensive sonic zombie horde truck but not basic training or tactics; it's like they were made stupid on purpose, which is probably the case because they're outsmarted by 19-25 year old's at every corner, none with any sort of survival training. Even when the hipster squad decides to light a fire and stay outside for the night all of them go to sleep instead of setting watch schedules. Personally they'd be dead 10 times over if they weren't so amazingly 'lucky'. As well as that, even though the military have choppers, amazing sonic technology zombie horde trucks; they don't seem to have any sort of IR camera (which you can buy as an add-on for your phone for gods sake!) as you could pick up a group of hikers and differentiate from zombies on high res IR rather easy.

Yet another one of the hipster squad has died, from a half amputated hand; something that bears mentioning is that the hipster squad don't know how the virus spreads and seem to be immune so at worst this one guy would lose his hand, not his life. It just seems like the developers are throwing twists in to 'make it interesting', sadly this isn't working, it just makes the film seem sillier and sillier as I watch it. The skinny protagonist decides to split up from the hipster squad, surrenders to a soldier as he was given a prototype vaccine and may still be an infected carrier blah blah same old BS is on the ground, still manages to overpower another spec ops soldier; again ignores his rifle and then as the hipster squad magically arrive at their country house he manages to magically tel-e port (Good job spelling correct, maybe you should pick up a dictionary; both clay (no space) more and tel-e (no space, no hyphen) port will be in it, or you know; since reviews are moderated allow 'spelling mistakes' if someone check-boxes them and penalise users who abuse that system) to the beach where he started out, despite it being a two days walk. On this beach he sits down, contemplates life and then walks into the water (with no stones in his pockets) until he is completely submerged, apparently killing himself, when he could have just been shot in the head literally one and a half 'film minutes' ago. Cut to credits.

I want my hour and a half back, this film is a terrible copy of 28 days later with a bit of a twist.

Great movie for those who played the game as kids and a decent family film too. I'll have to emulate the first three games (I've a PS2 downstairs and bought each game as it was released though over about 13 or so years the games have either been lost or scratched up. I still miss upgrading the chicken gun in the first game to turn enemies into giant clucking chickens. Always loved the games and the movie doesn't disappoint either, though they naturally had to squeeze hours upon hours of game (I think I completed the first one twice to get the RYNO since it was the most expensive thing in the game, though with it the last boss became a 5 minute ordeal compared to a 20 minute whittle down his health) it's rather depressing that they can't make video-games like this anymore and have to make movies to immortalise them though the movie has everything from the game (even the hover taxis), just squeezed into an hour and a half. I can understand why critics mightn't like it, they may not have played the games; the movie is a great source of nostalgia for me back to a time where children's video- games were enjoyable either by children or adults and had serious replay value, it's sad to realise that game developers will now just make what they think makes money, or make 'casual games', there's very little out of the box thinking) if you're a fan of the game or have kids the movie is great (though somewhat rushed in areas since they tried to stick to the original game's narrative while giving it an almost complete (spoiler alert) ratchet was never in the galactic rangers ever in the video-games, but quark usually popped up here and there IIRC (end spoiler), a great daytime movie and even my cat hopped up on my lap to avidly watch it. It'd get a 9 out of 10 if they'd made a 2 hour movie that wasn't as rushed, but it's not a Disney-Pixar unlimited time and money animation so I'm sure the studio went as far as their budget would allow and even left it open for a sequel while not leaving things on a cliffhanger.

Personally I'd like to see the three original games made into movie form, even if it's direct to DVD, old fans of the game; I can remember sharing secrets locations of golden bolts how best to get through levels and such, which, sadly nobody does anymore (hence game developers jumping to procedural generation to make things more interesting, hopefully given five years or so they'll have procedural generation designed so no play-through is the same but the whole whispering of secret areas, things to backtrack to and game-play tips will be a schoolyard thing again, I wouldn't want children of mine growing up in such an artificially sterile world) I would assume because all they need is an internet walk-through or let's play videos on YouTube.

All in all, budget considered; it's an excellent adaption of video game to movie. I know I've rambled on about games, though it's a movie adaption of a of mind-blowing game, hopefully there will be more movies to come, it's just a pity that the critics gave the movie such a low score, for what it is it's worth eight stars; easily.

I look forward to hooking up my PS3 controller to my PC and playing the sequels to the original (I know the original back to front), hopefully this movie will inspire game designers to turn away from total realism and think outside the box a bit more, the Jak and Daxter and Ratchet and Clank game series' made my childhood, along with games like Abe's odyssey and Exodus.