A few lines on Echo Bridge's 1
0 Movie Sci-Fi Pack.
I bought this set last Autumn because it was cheap and had a couple of fims that i wanted. David Cronenberg's
Existenz and the Christopher Lambert / Natasha Henstridge action horror
Adrenalin: Fear the Rush. I watched both of them when i bought it but left the others.
Until now!
Invasion of the Pod People (2007)
The Asylums' take on the classic
Invasion of the Bodysnatchers. I'm guessing this came out when the Daniel Craig film
The Invasion hit our cinema screens.
The Invasion was a huge failiure at the box office, although i have to admit i didn't mind it at all. No matter how poor that film was you can virtually guarantee
Pod People will be ten times worse, and it is. Due to budgetary constraints the film never gets outdoors we never see how much of the world has been taken over, nor are there any thrilling pursuits or set pieces of any kind. Had the budget run to grabbing some extras for filming it may have helped. Unfortunately the acting and script is so weak that you never care about any of the characters beyond the first thirty minutes, so
Invasion of the Pod People ends up a total waste of time.
Monster (2008)
Things get worse. Clearly ripping off
Cloverfield,
Monster is the worst found footage film i've ever seen. The camera work is terrible, the film pixelates, goes black for minutes at a time, we gaze at the floor for what seems like hours, its just horrible. Possibly its just as well because the few glimpses we see of the horribly animated CGI monster are just as ineffective The actors in this monstrosity make the cast of
Pod People seem like Oscar winners.
Seriously, avoid this like the plague.
Apocalypse (2007)
Marginally better,
Apocalypse is The Asylum's take on
Armageddon and
Deep Impact, two successfull meteor films from the late nineties.
Armageddon being the better of the two being a men on a mission film with added schmaltz. For some reason
Apocalypse decides to go down the
Deep Impact route and what begins as a fun take on the subject with decent effects, as chunks of meteor destroy roads and generally cause mayhem, descends half way through into a pseudo religious affair with the characters convinced their faith will save them. Much like
Deep Impact it all becomes very annoying and you wish everyone dead.
War of the Worlds 2 : The Next Wave. (2008)
Finally a film from The Asylum with somebody i've heard of. A certain C Thomas Howell, he of
The Hitcher and
Gettysburg fame. Howell both stars and directs and to be fair it isn't a bad film. A sequel to
H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds another Howell film from 2005. The acting and direction is pretty decent and the effects are well done for a micro budget film. There is a reasonable amount of suspense and the final battle as the US air force attack the martians is a well constructed conclusion
War of the Worlds 2: The Next Wave is easily the best of these four Asylum features, in fact it really is the only one worth watching at all.
I'll give the set another visit in November when i'll be watching the remaining four films. None of which are Asylum productions.
