Species (1995)

I didn’t really know what to do for this week’s review, as, being a colossal idiot, I forgot to take into account that there were five weeks in August - and being a somewhat neurotic personality, I really didn’t want next week’s planned review to be the last one of the month. I had planned Ghostbusters 2 for that slot. But here I was with an empty slot waiting to be filled. I was conflicted over what to do until I noticed what was coming up next on my Netflix DVD queue…

Then I was like, “Hellooooo new can of worms to be opened!”

Ew.

This was one of those horror franchises I had overlooked prior to watching the movie for this review. Frankly, I kind of wish it had stayed that way after seeing it. I mean, how was this thing funded? My guess is, it had something to do with pointing a lot of guns at crying peoples’ heads while they beg for a little more time to pay you off for the crack they bought.

Director: Roger Donaldson

Starring: Ben Kingsley, Michael Madsen, Natasha Henstridge

IMDb

Co-written with Colin/The Observer.

Oh, is our time up? I can live with that. If it means I don't have to watch a second of this horrible movie! But that would be too easy, wouldn't it?

We start off with a list of actors overtop, which I think was a bit cruel; how were they expected to forget the fact that they’d ever been in this if their names are what STARTS the damn thing off? I mean these weren’t exactly unknowns: Michael Madsen, Forest Whitaker and Ben fucking Kingsley? I dunno though - maybe this was more like the price they all paid for the Satanic oath they took in the early 90s to become big stars later.

We then see a girl being held captive in some kind of chamber with Kingsley, playing scientist Fitch. Fitch orders his people to flood the chamber with gas and turns and walks away dramatically, which is always preferable to actually making sure you did the work correctly. As, you know, if you DON’T do that, your subject might escape and flee upon an unsuspecting world.

I see this fall's theater production of Stephen King's Firestarter is going swimmingly.

Oops! Oh well. We tried!

I just think it was irresponsible of them to let the Ferguson police force act as guards for this facility. But oh well, I guess they had to give them some jobs.

The girl escapes to a train where she gets a free ticket because she’s a little girl. However, the stewardess gets what she had coming to her for giving the girl a free ticket WHEN…

Yeah! Take that, train staff who did nothing wrong!

Kingsley is busy gathering a team of complete nonsense, as he has brought together the finest minds that poor writing can produce - a sort of “Super Friends” of idiocy. We get Forest Whitaker as Dan Smithson, a psychic. There’s Michael Madsen as Lennox, a hitman. There’s molecular biologist Laura, played by Marg Heigenberger, and also anthropologist Stephen Arden - I say all of their occupations, but really aside from Madsen and Whitaker, I couldn’t tell who these characters were supposed to be without looking at Wikipedia. Becuase that’s how you make a good movie!

Oh wait, no it isn’t. These characters are just bland with no personalities outside of one-note cliche. Madsen’s line sums it up pretty well: “We’re all here for the same reason...whatever that is.”

"When can I go back to doing blow off a hooker's ass crack? This is already boring me." Seriously, Madsen in this is just like Madsen in anything else - he has two modes of expression; confused and "I don't give a fuck."

It’s called a paycheck, buddy. It’s okay to admit that when you’re in a movie with this in it:

Well they always DID say women were different from men. Though when they said "women are from Venus," I never thought they meant it so literally.

Also, why is Kingsley, a scientist, utilizing a psychic to solve his problem? Isn’t that just like the most desperate, end-of-days sign ever, when a scientist who should have all the answers is just like “Fuck it! I’m calling a psychic!”? I mean Jesus.

That wouldn't be a good sign either!

Whitaker’s character is seriously just a new wonder of the world, as every line he has is just stating the obvious without actually contributing anything. I swear all of his scenes go like this:

[WHITAKER sees a horrific blood-soaked crime scene with a murder victim lying on his stomach with a clear gunshot wound to the head. The killer is being taken away in a police car.]

WHITAKER: Something...BAD happened here….I think…

That really isn’t too far off - he sees the place where that train stewardess lady was murdered, stares at it blankly for a few seconds, clearly understanding nothing, then goes “Something bad happened here.” Where did you come up with that brilliant deduction? Did you sit at your desk for hours and pore over complex formulas for hours? Did you lose sleep as you thought for hours about the complex ramifications of every bit of that concept?

We hit the ultimate low (for the first half hour anyway) when the movie actually tries to pull off an exposition scene with Kingsley explaining how they fucked up so hard. Get this: apparently they were given some space DNA or something from aliens and blended it with human to create a little girl that aged a lot faster than regular humans. Within a month she was already looking like a five year old girl:

So basically it's just another trite "humans fuck with science" movie. We get it, humans are bad. Please shut up and stop thinking you're intellectual in any way.

Maybe if you bungholes got security that wasn’t complete fucking shit, she wouldn’t have been able to escape that easily and you wouldn’t have this problem. You made contact with alien life, fucked with it, and then didn’t even have the good sense to make ABSOLUTELY SURE she can’t get out in like two seconds. That’s fucking amazing. You guys deserve an award. But not the kind you were probably hoping you’d get.

Oh, and apparently they made it a female because they wanted it to be “more docile and easy to control” - what, did you time travel in from the 1950s white-picket-fence suburbia housewife land or what? Are you even serious?

So their next step is to figure out something in the lab. What are they doing? I have no fucking idea - sciencey stuff is just cool! Lab coats and glass chambers! Yeah!

Kingsley orders two of them to go in and fix something wrong with the equipment. They can’t use lab techs who would normally do this because, as Kingsley informs us, “it’s classified.” So they go in there and immediately break off a part of their machine by accident, and spend way longer than they ever had a right to looking for it on the floor. Gee, it’s almost like they weren’t qualified to do anything in there, huh? While they’re doing that, a horrific alien mutation somehow happens in the room and begins to grow faster than an oil-boom town:

Kingsley’s immediate response is to lock all three of the people he hired to kill this thing inside and start counting down to destroy the entire room, chanting all the while that he “has to follow protocol” like a malfunctioning ‘droid from the Stars Wars universe.

Then after Kingsley comes to his senses and hits the ‘unlock door’ button and lets them out, the room then bursts into flames:

I'm really starting to think this whole science lab thing Kingsley runs is one of those cheap back alley ones where they pay you like a hundred bucks to do tests that turn your urine blue for two weeks and make your balls itch. I really don't think it's reputable, guys.

So that’s what would have happened to these poor saps who are working for free for Kingsley’s character, if they hadn’t been let out at the last second. Let’s recap - you’ve blown up your lab, almost killed your team (and if they weren't brain dead they would never trust you again after this) and learned nothing useful at all. Overall I think it was a success. But then again, I'm a complete fraud and nothing I say can be taken seriously.

So while they’re floundering around like complete morons, the alien, called Sil, is busy buying a dress that makes her look like a fucking Power Rangers-themed bridesmaid:

She looks like a Power Rangers suit that stopped changing mid-transformation. Sailor Moon looked more subtle.

Then she goes to some club and kills a woman in the bathroom, then wears nothing but a bra and long pants and takes some guy home to kill him. Her line is as follows: “You want to go to a party?” The guy goes, “Where at?” Then she says, “I don’t know!” I realize having a half-naked woman just walking up and flirting with you is awesome and all, but come the fuck on. That’s ridiculous.

They go home and we get the entire reason this movie was made:

...to show off her beautiful eyes, hair and facial features obviously! What? Did you think I was going to say something perverted?

The next half hour or so is mostly made up of Sil going around killing random men who won’t have a baby with her, because yeah, that’s the plot now - she wants to get pregnant and have some super-baby that grows up fast like she did, which will then start a perpetual train of horrible, horrible sequels. Joyous. I dunno, just set Sil up with the land shark from Creature. They’re both horny freaks and will be perfect for each other.

So yeah, tons of scenes of Sil just killing random guys, which is cool because of boob shots mostly, because this movie is perpetually 13 years old. My favorite is this guy, who freaks out like he’s being molested by a 60-year-old fat priest when she’s taking off his underwear.

Dude, you were already making out with her in a pool with her completely naked, so what the fuck? Oh well. He did make a bit of a scramble for the phone earlier and she had to pull him back in to keep making out. So my guess is he’s got some painful self-discovery to do sometime in the future. Or he would have if she didn’t kill him immediately after.

"I have to get the phone! That's my totally not gay male friend who wants to come over and lather my body in skin-refreshing oils!"

They eventually all meet up with Sil at this hotel or whatever and she thinks it’s a great idea for some reason to come up to Forest Whitaker, stare at him for a second so he can go “it’s you” because this movie thinks its audience is retarded and can’t figure things out by themselves, and then run away.

Spoon, meet audience's mouths.

Helicopters immediately spring up from nowhere, apparently and chase them down - what, were they just lying in wait for anything to happen at all? Must have been a boring fucking night.

"Oh goodie, something to do finally!"

I guess she sneaks back later and tricks Doc Ock from the Raimi Spider-Man movies here to have sex with her, then kills him once she’s finally pregnant. Then she runs into the sewers and they have to chase her, because this wasn't enough like a shitty Stephen King adaptation already.

Then we get one of the pastimes enjoyed by every bad, unimaginative pile of crap - the “flashlights and guns in the dark wandering” scene. Oh yeah. We really needed another one of those. And I really need a good coma right about now so I can wake up after movies stop thinking scenes like this are in any way productive to humanity.

Even the characters look bored to be doing this scene. GOD it's dull!

The movie’s not done with us yet, though, as we still have THIS image to burn into our minds:

The Gerber Baby is falling on hard times after being introduced to the new drug of chemical radiation.

The baby is killed almost instantly and is thrown into the fire below - which really pisses off Sil, who for some reason was just hiding this whole time. Why is she pissed off? She can make another one in like two hours! But I guess that wouldn't give us material for '90s computer game CGI:

There's a fucking reason old monster movies like Alien, Predator and Jaws didn't show the monster - it's because they knew the effects looked fake and wanted to keep up the illusion. Smoke and mirrors, you bungholes. Why couldn't you have taken the similar path?

They knock Sil into the fire too, very easily I might add, and then all that's left to do is save Whitaker from falling in:

Please don't save him. I don't need to hear any more Captain Obvious-style lines from this moron. "Oh, thanks for saving me, you guys; I could have burnt alive if I fell in there. That would have been painful. Pain is bad. I think something really bad was going to happen if you hadn't saved me." AAAAAAHHHHHH!

Then proving the film has the highest quality writers available, we end on this line: “I never thought I’d be so happy to be back in a sewer,” as they’re leaving the caves and instead going back into the sewers.

No. That line is stupid. This movie is stupid. The characters were bland as all hell when they weren’t ungodly annoying, the story was hackneyed shit made for perverted 13-year-olds, the acting was just pitiful and the CGI was seriously just so bad I can’t even think of a good word. Pac Man is laughing at you right now, guys.

It just amazes me that this somehow got enough money and fans to warrant sequels. Three sequels! That’s astounding to me! And they’re probably all even worse than this, which is hard to imagine at this point. What, did the directors of those sequels just blackmail the studio execs? I really don’t want to imagine the kind of blackmail it would require to allow THIS piece of sewer slime spawn sequels. Ugh.

This whole thing is just pure stale '90s cheese at its worst. It's extremely dated now, but I doubt it ever had much shelf life on it even back when it came out. This thing is just pure ass. If you have a chance to pass it up, take it like you would if you were offered a million dollars. You won't regret it and your brain cells will thank you later.

Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them.

REVIEW: Suspect Zero (2004)

Suspect Zero is a fraudulent and meaningless film that attempts to be artful but comes off as entirely idiotic and pointless. It is an insanely pretentious, confusing mess of a film, and I really can’t see any redeeming factors in it. The characters are stock, the writing is boring, the directing is complete try-hard nonsense…everything about it sucks! Do I even have to review it? Might as well save myself the time and energy now. This isn’t even worth talking about. So there, I’m done with this one – NEXT!

Wait, what do you mean my family is being held hostage by hungry Brazilian terrorists and will be killed if I don’t actually review this film? Well, damn. FOR MY FAMILY I will persevere!

Director: E. Elias Merhige

Starring: Ben Kingsley, Aaron Eckhart, Carrie-Ann Moss

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0324127/

Director E. Elias Merhige apparently believes that cinema is the only meaningful form of art anymore. The fact that he says that while putting out dreck like this is just hilarious, as this is art-less, confused slop like none I've ever seen. It's tough to bash a movie made by well-meaning, honest and nice people, but when I get one like this, pretentiously made by a pretentious twat of the highest order? It's like Christmas come early. Let's get started with this systematic beating.

The film begins with some fat bald guy getting jump scare’d by a happy couple running around outside. Good news, though, you can’t possibly be more of a pussy than this guy. He then gets jump scare’d DOUBLE by Academy Award winning actor Ben Kingsley, whose participation in this film is completely a mystery to me. Maybe they promised him some pot brownies or something. He certainly acts like he’s on drugs during this whole thing. I’ve seen more sober performances from Bill and Ted.

He looks like he's seeing right through your SOUL.

So yeah, he gets in the back seat of the guy’s car magically, I guess, and kills him by fading into the next scene!

Dammit Ben Kingsley, stop popping up in the back of my car seat! I know you played Gandhi, but that excuse just isn't gonna hold up forever you know! You gotta get your life in order.

Then we get to meet superstar FBI agent Aaron Eckhart, who is so cool that his scenes sometimes get to be shot with SUPER HIGH TECH red filters!

...because there's something wrong with just shooting this like a regular shot? Even if it's some kind of weird psychic vision, it just breaks up the film when it's done so randomly like this.

He goes to the crime scene of the guy who was killed in the opening and sees that his eyelids were cut off, which has the unique effect of making his eyes look really strange.

Now you know he'll have to look you in the eye when he's talking to you...

Eckhart gets put on the case with his old flame Trinity from the Matrix series - yes, really - who in this movie is a local cop who needs to work with the FBI for...unstated reasons. I guess they couldn't have just had her working with him from the beginning? It's not like their relationship plays a huge role or anything. But that doesn't stop them from talking about it in the most obnoxiously cliched ways ever! It goes kinda like this:

ECKHART: You just stay out of my way, because I'm over you and in charge of this case! I'm going to act stoic and silent not because that's my personality, but because I'm a poorly written and half-baked protagonist!

TRINITY: Oh you never change, always ignoring me and trying to be in control, just like when we were in a relationship! Even though this is work and I should be able to put that behind me, I'm bringing it up anyway just because that's what one-time lovers who have to work together do in these movies! Blah blah blah...

So they go to this halfway house where Ben Kingsley supposedly stayed, and find out that he lived in a basement full of cliché serial killer stuff like newspaper clippings, writings on the wall and crazy looking drawings right out of Se7en. Because otherwise he just wouldn’t be edgy enough! And the movie understands that there are no other ways to convey insanity and depravity besides showing these stock, over-used tropes that have been done in literally every other serial killer movie ever made. Uh huh. Not like you could have had, I don't know, actual character depth and good writing instead, right? No? Okay then.

What, writings on the wall? Only crazy people do that!

And only crazy people collect newspaper clippings! I deduce from my extremely limited, biased POV that this guy must be nuts.

After that we see a girl getting kidnapped and raped; don’t you just love how tasteful this movie is? Luckily the guy gets killed by Kingsley, though. Kingsley also leaves a special message for Eckhart, because apparently the rapist guy was the one who got Eckhart suspended from the force back in the day…I don’t know, the connection between Eckhart and Kingsley throughout the whole film is tenuous at best. The character relationships in this film all feel SO half-assed and underdeveloped. It expects you to follow along with Eckhart and his ex, and also with Kingsley and Eckhart's 'psychic bond' thing, but none of it is ever really explained or given any significance. It's just put on the backburner for the psychological cop thriller story, except THAT sucks too! So really, what are you left with but a big old dusty corpse of a film with nothing to offer at all?

So then they go to see this doctor who used to know Kingsley. Apparently Kingsley was part of some experiment by the government to give him the power to read the minds of serial killers. The good ol doc says that Kingsley believes in a super serial killer called Suspect Zero who kills people all over the United States and has never been caught. Geez, must really rack up the car bills, huh? How do you think he pays those, anyway? Does he double as some kind of traveling salesman or something? Granted, the idea is cool, but it’s just not explained that well, and the way it’s presented is pretty goofy at best. I mean we’re really supposed to buy this? A few killings in a couple of states, sure, but look at this map Kingsley has:

THAT MANY killings all over the country??? Maybe if they had just limited it to one or two Suspect Zero killings in MOST of the states I wouldn’t complain, but the fact that there are so many is just insane!

And also, this government experiment lets him see what serial killers are doing? How does that even work? Are serial killers some kind of special breed of human being now? How did they make it so he didn’t just pick up what some random Joe was doing on the street? Score one for extremely specific government psychic powers, I guess.

After that we see Eckhart brooding and sitting alone while researching more stuff about the case, because it’s all you need to know about his character. And then you get Ben Kingsley crying silent cinematic tears while having spastic daydreams of random killings – yup, these two things sum up the next half hour or so of the film. Snooooooooooze. Here is another one of the movie’s main problems actually; THE DIRECTING IS CRAP. Seriously, it’s hard to enjoy this movie when every other scene has these random effects filters over it:

Well, okay, this one is a flashback...but there's another flashback in this movie and it's NOT shot in random sepia-toned filters, so what the hell?

It’s like the director is projecting his mental vomit onto the screen. We really don’t need to see all this schizophrenic kid-hyped-on-sugar-style directing to get the point of the story. It’s not even that complex of a story really. Why all the pointless masturbation of effects? It's like the director's only real concept for how to put this movie together was the 'PowerPoint slide show style,' with random images flashing on screen, interrupting the story, trying to show us their significance but ultimately failing, because there is no significance. Alright, look, I'm gonna have to go into rant mode here: 

Just throw all of these scenes, with their terrible directing choices and poor attempts at symbolism, into what I like to call the Artistic Garbage Bin – the place where movies like this are destined to go. It is a place for films which pile on the arty, faux-pretentious camera shots and symbolism and everything else, and yet say nothing of worth. What is Suspect Zero saying? That it would really suck if you had to see people doing horrible things to each other in your dreams all the time? Yeah, I don’t know. I think you’re going to need a better purpose than that, movie. To the Artistic Garbage Bin with you!

But the movie plods on with more nonsense as Eckhart discovers Kingsley’s secret, that he’s been killing people who killed other people. Kingsley finally seeks him out and kidnaps him, tying him up and gagging him BECAUSE…I really don’t know. Kingsley’s acting gets really over the top, too, as he SHOUTS random WORDS in HIS sentences with no real rhyme or REASON to it! And why couldn’t he just TALK to Eckhart; what’s up with the bondage? He even puts him in handcuffs when they go out together. I think the director was just living out some kind of weird Aaron Eckhart in handcuffs fantasy…eugh.

They eventually find out that Suspect Zero lives on some ranch and takes kids there to kill them from all over the country – seems highly impractical and prone for errors, but hey, I’m not the one with enough time to kill that many people. I guess I shouldn’t be talking. Eckhart kills the guy, and then Kingsley gets Trinity to kill him by pretending to attack Eckhart, as he just can’t take the pain anymore. What an underwhelming ending. I’ve had more emotional attachment to used chopsticks. I’ve seen documentaries about dung beetles with more drama. What a load of baboon hair shavings!

This movie is a mess! It’s just so confusing and so boring that it can’t possibly appeal to anyone but the most die-hard fans of these kinds of cop/serial killer flicks, and even then they probably wouldn’t like it much. It’s just garbage; pure, complete garbage. I hate this movie – I hate the pretentiously serious tone it has. I hate the weird, spazzoid directing style that can’t even convey the simple, droll storyline with any kind of coherence. I hate the bland, shapeless lumps the film tries to pass across as characters. I hate the fact that this film was so dull I couldn’t even make any good jokes about it; this isn't my usual keep for reviewing, you know. I'm glad I never have to watch this again. Now can you please release my family, Brazilian terrorists? Pretty please?