axeman-9

This is the first movie that has literally nothing going for it. Completely incompetent in every aspect. Completely. The actors can't act. The lighting appears to be a single shop light blasted directly into the actors faces. The sets are thrown together in a warehouse or the directors dining room with props made from discarded office furniture and printer paper. The script is mind numbing and the story impenetrable. The editing is spastic and confusing.

The direction is completely flat, motionless and downright stupid. The director is so stupid he created clearly fake IMDB accounts and wrote pretentious nonsense reviews trying to justify the end product. I bet even the food at lunch sucked. This isn't just bad, it is a perfect storm of terrible that goes clean though bad and out the other side still accelerating.

People wonder how Tommy Wiseau got the money together to make The Room. Whether it was money laundering for the Russian Mob or him saving all his pennies you can at least see some of that money on the screen. Tommy got people with at least a bit of acting experience or who took a class or two. The lighting is ok, the CGI is competent and the whole thing is in focus. What the hell did Mark Region do with the $5 million budget for this piece of dross? He didn't waste it on the movie, that's for sure. This is not even funny bad, just bad in every way.

No point bothering explaining the plot in detail, the high concept title tells it all. Two CG monsters battle it out around the world while plucky scientists try to save the day where the military alone have failed.

I watched this dreck back to back with it's stable mate Mega Piranha, which allowed me to experience the full range of Asylum Films talent pool, shallow though it is. Deborah Gibson, the heroine of MSvGO, isn't actually half bad and comes across as having at least some screen presence. She's still good looking and perfectly believable as the feisty marine biologist out to save the world. Compared to Tiffany in an almost identical role in Mega Piranha, she's practically Meryl Streep. As a kid I preferred Tiffany, so it hurt to see her as a near unrecognisable short, chubby sinkhole. Gibson looks almost unchanged from her heyday and can manage to both walk AND deliver lines, a feat beyond my former favourites capabilities.

As for the rest of the cast, the only standout is Sean Lawlor as the straight talking mentor to Gibson. He seems pretty relaxed in the role and perfectly believable, he could hold his own in any TV show guest role. Vic Chao plays Debs love interest and Japans top marine biologist, but his accent changes scene by scene and he would definitely be punching above his weight to get Miss Gibson. Everyone else in the movie should stick to modelling or waiting tables, cardboard cut-outs would be better.

Chief villain of this movie is the director and writer, a one man vortex of incompetence. The story is poorly paced, it's badly filmed, scenes are sloppily blocked out and the characters are laughably clichéd and one dimensional. The end just peters out and no attempt is made to explain what actually kills the baddies. Ed Wood style stock footage and abandoned cement works are used in lieu of proper sets and effects, while the actual effects are far from special. I am a hobbyist animator and I could confidently better the CG effects in this movie single handed given a few weeks.

I was going to list good points and bad points, but there's no real way I can with this nonsense. Any movie which has a 1000 foot long shark leap 35,000 feet in the air to attack a 747 passing at 550 mph goes beyond mere logic. The sheer stupidity involved in many of the films pivotal moments just slap the viewer repeatedly in the face with errors and inconsistencies of enormous proportions. Worse still, the movie practically crawls along when the monsters are not on screen. Mega Piranha, an equally dumb movie, at least has good pacing and is never boring. A film can commit any crime except being boring, and unfortunately this film is often bordering on dull.

I was always told that no one ever set out to make a bad movie, they did the best they could with what they had. These guys rather blow that theory out of the water.

Anyway, here's the premise. Tiffany and a couple of Americans working in the Venezuelan jungle for no good reason release mutant Piranha into the river. They double in size every few hours and eat several bikini clad women and a US diplomat, bringing them to the attention of the US State Dept. An impossibly ripped special forces dude is sent to investigate, running into the clichéd South American corrupt sleazy Colonel and huge rubbery fish. It all gets out of hand and the faeces/fan interface is spectacular.

Good points? The pace is pretty relentless, with lots of action throughout. The CGI and effects in general are nowhere near as bad as in Mega Shark v Giant Octopus, coming up to TV movie standards most of the time. They only really become obvious because we get to see so much of them. Oh, and there's some smashing boobage at the start. Bad points? Crummy acting, clichéd dialogue, clichéd characters with no more than 1 dimension and Tiffany way chubbier than her old nude photos.

This Is a pretty inept attempt at a scifi shocker, but fun none the less. Fans of rubbish movies will love it, a few beers and all sins are forgiven as you laugh your nuts off.