Screamers: The Hunting

Y'know that feeling you get whenever you've mostly liked an original movie but knew where it messed up, then you catch yourself hoping the sequel will be better than the first film because they must've have learned what not to do?

But then the sequel is actually worse than the first because the new filmmaker learned nothing? Suddenly your bring home the corpse of a squirrel because it was looking at your gold? But you don't have any gold? And you're not prospecting?

It's probably just your mind protecting itself from more harm. Alcohol can help but you're just masking the movie. It's traumatic.

Observing the comments I've read that give this film a 1 star rating, it is really not that bad, there are some negative points to it but also a lot of positive points that make up for it, one of the negative points is that its predictable, you can tell who's going to survive and who's going to get turned into mince meat as soon as the main characters are introduced, the effects are to me the usual DTV standard, not overly impressive and to bad either.

The acting wasn't that bad either, some performances could've been better though, Lance Henriksen's performance in the film certainly stands out like always, even though he's only in it for more or less 20 minutes.

If you've read the negative comments before reading the positive, just bare in mind that this is a DTV film, and obviously had a low budget, so this is a good movie via DTV standards, and wasn't really better than the first one but it also wasn't worse.

Take a look at the picture of the cover, as posted on IMDb. Note the rather generic and jaded design, and note that significant elements of the scary imagery seem to be lifted from other well known horror/science-fiction films. If you accept that the cover does in fact reveal the quality of the film, then you will have little reason to be disappointed.

This movie has a serious case of 'sequel-itis', and many of the outstanding points in the original from (some of) the acting, to the costumes, are seriously degraded, but nonetheless, the overall result is of sturdy B-movie grade. Most elements, from plot to acting are 'bad' in the sense that they are liable to be rated rather low in comparison to many other films you might have seen, but they are not generally provokingly bad in and of themselves.

The simplest way of judging whether you should see Screamers: the Hunting if you are interested in the genre and intrigued by the synopsis, would be to ask whether or not you are angered by all mediocrity in movies. If so, avoid. If you can be more tolerant and watch with appropriately restrained expectations, the movie is okay.

There are quite a few reviews stating this is utter crap. I don't think it's quite that bad, for a straight to DVD sequel it's one of the better ones I've seen.

I liked the original Screamers, it's one of the best kept secrets of 90's sci-fi. Not a perfect movie by any means, but a good sleeper. In this movie you have a rescue team heading back to Sirius 6B.

The plot is actually quite similar to Cameron's Aliens, and does a pretty good job at it. Quite a few of straight to DVD movies don't have a plot even this strong, even if it's something you've seen many times before. It may also be the point that saves this movie, that it relies on a formula that's already proved good.

The sets and production values are surprisingly good. The space ship looks believable, the gore is surprisingly strong (even too strong for my liking) and some of the images are genuinely creepy.

What tunes the movie down a bit is the acting/casting. While there are a few passable performances, most of them are just not good. Most TV series have better casting. The acting is not as over the top as it could be, but there are some performances that just don't work. Lance Henriksen is a capable and charismatic actor and I'm really not sure why he's into these b- horror movies these days.

Still it's better than what people here are writing. It's not a masterpiece, but entertaining enough to keep you seated for it's duration.

Greetings,

I will keep it short. This is a movie full of clichés and inconsistencies in relation to the original. Mediocre at best - it should not be considered "Canon" in my opinion as Screamers deserves a proper sequel.

The narrative is broken at best - remember the original? The screamers were made on Earth, there was no point in going back to planet 6B to "retrieve data". It was on Earth to begin with.

Sfx are terrible and could work only for short intros in a video game. The Screamer animations look very bad and they are repetitive. The combat scenes are also disappointing, and don't provide any thriller whatsoever. The best scenes of the movie are not the ones where Sfx is used.

The acting is not terrible but there is a lack of fluidity, as none of the protagonists are memorable the relationships between them are superficial. A black guy was a member of the team - but he dies quite early. Heroically. I suppose that's what it is called these days - a "racially inclusive" movie.

The original was a pure 90s classic, it had its own charm. There were some plot inconsistencies, but it tried to surprise viewers. Remember the child robot? It was creepy. Here on the other hand we don't have any of that.

I personally would like to ignore this as a sequel. Can somebody make a movie where the Earth civilization dies, and Sirius 4 inhabitants face the imminent threat? That would be a lot more plausible.

I would like to see a proper sequel, a reboot of sorts.