Almost a decade ago, director Simon Hunter showed some promise with the stylish British slasher LIGHTHOUSE – no great shakes in the script department but demonstrative of behind the camera talent. His first movie since then is this much-delayed movie version of a cult role-playing game, and it proves to be equal parts fun and ill-conceived.
Its scene-setting opening narration invites guffaws with its ham-handed use of hackneyed movie trailer voiceover lines like “In a world without end…”. The initial narration proves to be characteristic of the near-humorless, po-faced tone of what follows.
In the wake of the Ice Age, a force known only as The Machine arrived on Earth with the power, and intentions, of turning mankind into mutants. A hero succeeded in defeating the threat, sealing it for centuries. Now, in the year 2707, Earth is a ravage wasteland controlled by four opposing corporations that are constantly in war against each other. It’s during one such war that the seal gets broken and the Machine once again becomes a potentially apocalypse-bringing threat. Prominent leaders and wise men set about striving to save the world from oblivion by sending a selected troupe of men, led by hard-drinking Thomas Jane, on a potentially fatal mission to destroy the Machine, fighting off the growing hordes of feral mutants in the process.
A lot of prominent, disparate influences are at work within MUTANT CHRONICLES : it is built on the foundations of a traditional men (and women) on a mission movie, albeit with added mutants. The battle sequences opt for the frenetic confusion and audio drop-out realism of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. When one of the animalistic mutants is retained in captivity, a large debt is owed to 28 DAYS LATER.
All of this is laden with a significant amount of dime-store philosophy about how much the human race sucks. Prepare for such stunning revelations as “We’ve always excelled at killing each other” in between dire one liners like “You can fuck a lot of people but you can only die once”.
The dialogue weakens it considerably, though luckily the movie’s eclectic cast transcend it with panache (albeit, in some cases, with the addition of some bizarre accents). Ron Perlman battles valiantly against an apparently Irish brogue as a prophecy-spouting Basil Exposition figure, while Sean Pertwee was the best choice to spout the exclamation “Facking mutants!”. John Malkovich shows up for a couple of scenes and acts like he hopes no one will recognize him. Thomas Jane has had better showcases elsewhere though, even in an under-written tough-guy role, he is commanding, particularly when he casually shoots Pertwee in the face as an act of mercy (in a sequence not a million miles away from the extraordinary climactic moment in THE MIST).
Hunter gives it a fashionably washed-out, mud / rain drenched, miserable post-apocalyptic look though the movie wanders between being visually striking and videogame-like tacky. Refreshingly, it embraces its R rating and regularly delivers unflinching bouts of graphic splatter : its among the goriest of the past year’s big budget mainstream movies, with frequent amputations, disemboweling, impaling, faces ripped off and the like. The mutants – all bad teeth and bone-blades protruding from their arms – are impressively ferocious. Paul Hyett contributed to the flick’s overall grisliness…but his fine make-up effects are sadly overwhelmed by the most regrettable element of the whole enterprise.
Sadly, MUTANT CHRONICLES is dominated by a whole lot of very cartoonish, genuinely embarrassing CG gore, violence and explosions. Some of the gore – like a stalactite dropping on someone’s bones – is just plain fun, but watching the useless, goofy CGI exploding heads (to name but one example) makes you realize just how much fun this would have been with old-school FX all the way.
– Steven West
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
