Machined

I wonder if everyone saw the same film I watched... then I noticed that a better part of the good reviews for this film were posted prior to it's release date... so I guess the film makers have a lot of friends and family writing reviews for them. Also, I don't understand this excuse that most of the reviewers use stating "... considering the budget" or " great considering how low the budget". Since when do we excuse a film's poor production value on the money they had or didn't have? Maybe we need a new genre of films... Films shot on a shoestring budget that look like crap, but we excuse all that. Let me begin by saying that the box cover and the copy treatment are very misleading. This is some strange retelling of the Frankenstein story... only none of the characters are defined... none have the motivation or back story to even justify why they are doing what they do. Never did we get that Motorman Dan tinkered in reconstructive surgery... When he hits a motorist on the highway (on purpose or by accident? Who knows) he uses the victim to create his killing machine, but when did he hatch this plan... on the road? Days before? Weeks? How would a member of the audience know that his plan was to create this monster since there was no foreshadowing on this character... and since we never actually see him create the monster... I guess we have to just assume a lot. These are all the traits of a bad screenplay and this one is no exception with every cliché and bad horror movie moment telegraphed 500 feet ahead. For the most part the film is dark and murky and I guess this is the part we should forgive since they had no money for lights and the music was so annoying that at no point I had to turn the volume down as to not listen to it. The acting is OK, but at times the main character seemed to drift in and out of his part. The supporting cast is just plan bad and the monster, with his welding cap and pen lights just wanders around doing others bidding, so we are left to not care a thing for him. NOTE: In all great stories that involve a victim that is forced into bad situation... we should feel sorry for that person (Frankenstien's Monster, Hunchback, The Wolfman, etc).

I guess whether you like this movie or not depends on how tired you are of the slasher formula. Thankfully, this one doesn't have annoying teenagers in it. There's some more story and background than you might be used to getting, though it doesn't bog down the movie or anything like that. If anything, the slasher action kind of slows it down to a crawl, as the scenes get longer and longer and longer... until you're thinking to yourself, "How many victims does this guy *need*? Let's just get to the climax already!" Or maybe not. I did, at least.

There are a few fresh aspects to this movie, which might be what saves it for you. The director apparently was aware of how saturated the horror marketplace is right now, so I applaud anyone who tries to show any creativity whatsoever, even if it's just putting a football helmet and shoulderpads on a guy and calling him a cyborg. That's another thing that might bother you: this movie has really, really low budget effects. In fact, it's kind of distracting how low budget they are, but I guess I can't criticize the director for that. He did all he could with the money he had, and I guess the result is watchable. No, that's not much of an endorsement, but it's a lot better than I can say about most of today's low budget slasher movies. I recommend this movie if you're looking for a slasher that doesn't descend into "torture porn", doesn't have a bunch of horny teenagers that are too stupid to live, and has very little in the way of over-the-top screaming and shrieking. This movie will definitely *not* give you a headache, unless you're expecting good sets and sfx.

Wow...This movie is quite possibly the worst horror movie I've seen. Actors are horrible..the music??? a hole 2 songs that play over and over again if you have heard of a movie killing a song.. this movie has killed the song.. buried it back up and killed it again. The sound Fx..the screeching every 2 seconds quite annoying. In closing Id say if you wanna see a low budget piece of crap.. Go and watch this because it will satisfy you completely. It has all the elements in movies that you shouldn't do if you're into film-making. I can't believe that a studio actually made this and is selling and renting it in blockbuster. It really opens the word to filmmakers and shows that crap can be taken a long way.

Here's the thing, why do all horror movies have to take place at night? Would anyone protest if someone made a horror movie taking place during the day? Second, if you have next to no budget and no decent equipment, why would you go and film a movie at night, knowing full well that is going to look like garbage?

In Machined, a big mechanic dude is obsessed with all things gruesome. He pays a ton of money for some knife used in a killing. One day some guy drives on a desert road and his car breaks down. Motorman Dan literally runs into and over him. Then he takes the injured guy to his shop and does something to him. We don't know what, but it's painful and it involves putting a mask on the guy. We see this from the victim's POV.

Then a bunch of kids driving nearby at night have their car break down, they make it to the creepy shop. Dan offers to help but it will take a while. The kids start frolicking around when a creature appears and starts killing them. The creature is Dan's creation and he does look strange. He has a camera on this head and lights, so that Dan can see all the gory details on a tiny TV.

Eventually, the sister of the first victim starts looking for him and finds the shop. And there's an interesting twist near the end.

I'll give Machined credit for an idea, granted, the Frankensteinian creature isn't a new idea, but it's more than 99% of horror movies about dark-haired teenagers running at night in hallways from some lame killer. But you need more to make a movie aside from an idea and enthusiasm- you need resources, to at least be able to afford a decent camera and a flashlight. If you can't afford that, you have to be smart about using the little that you have. Machined isn't- it looks terrible and is painfully slow because it doesn't have anything to tell aside from the creature killing a few teens. Couldn't they have gotten at least some more teens to volunteer? A Z-budget movie through and through that probably should not have gotten distribution.

Renting movies is sort of like fishing ,you throw out a line and see what you get.I had never heard of this movie so I thought I'd give it a shot a see what I got.Not much ,it turns out.

This big fat weirdo of a mechanic who lives out in the desert runs runs over a guy walking along side the road.So instead of calling an ambulance our big fat bald weirdo takes the wounded guy back to his garage and puts him back together with mechanical parts.So then the big fat bald mechanic teaches Machine Man to kill people while baldy sits in another room and whacks off while watching it all on a monitor.I swear thats the movie.Really.

But don't let my dazzling synopsis fool you.It was a terrible movie.Badly lit,badly acted.I mean badly,badly acted.No special effects to speak of except people being stabbed and then getting back up and getting back in the action as if being stabbed through the liver can be cured by holding your side.

The movie also had all these annoying little atmosphere effects...like the light bulbs kept flickering and the monitor screens kept blinking off and on and these things happened over and over to the point of being so freaking irritating.So the mechanic could make a part man part machine to kill people but he couldn't fix a light bulb so it would stop flickering?And the Machine Man made these robot like sounds whenever he would move.Well Machine Man may be too grand a term....he looked more like some doofus in a football helmet with lights on it and he also had what looked like shoulder pads on too! There were a couple of topless chicks but they weren't enough to save this waste of time.This is just another home made looking piece of crap movie from Lionsgate.Shot on video at night in some junkyard......please someone take the cameras away from these little snot noses who all think they can make a horror movie.