Death Racers

Death Racers (2008)

* (out of 4)

Asylum's "mockbuster" of Jason Statham's DEATH RACE (a remake of DEATH RACE 2000) features the Insane Clown Posse so watch at your own risk. The "story" is set in the future as four groups enter a death race where they get points by the amount of people they kill. Our heroes, played by ICP, are trying to win their freedom but this only happens if they win the race. I listened to ICP when I was around sixteen but this little stretch in my life probably didn't last over a year or so. Watching DEATH RACERS all these years later was the first time since that I've heard anything from the group so I must admit that I was mildly interesting but the end result is just one complete mess. Even for a picture from The Asylum this thing here is pretty bad but at the same time I'll at least give it credit for attempting to be low-rent trash like the original movie and that's something that the remake tried to avoid. With that said, once again we're treated to a movie that has no original story to be found and sadly the filmmakers just kept it going and going and going. At over 90-minutes the story is so weak that it couldn't even support a 30-minute movie let along something three times longer than that. I'm really not sure why so many "C" movies of today have to run at these extended running times. The 50s and 70s were full of bad movies but at least they knew not to drag on for too long. The problem here is that we're given a mumbo jumbo backstory dealing with humans being held down but it's just boring. Even the four groups of characters are rather boring in their own right, although I'll give the screenwriter credit for the Vaginamyte name. Those wanting violence and gore will find that here as we're given quite a bit of CGI scenes that of course look bad but bad gore is better than none. Performances are what you'd expect from a film like this and fans of ICP will probably enjoy seeing them act out their characters. With that said, their songs being repeated over and over again gets very annoying very quickly. In the end, DEATH RACERS is ultra stupid and sadly there's just not enough going on to make it entertaining even in a "so bad it's good" way.

I've so far watched this film from the start to the first advert break. I can honestly say it's the biggest pile of crap I've ever seen. It reminds me of the kind of completely staged thing you see when watching wrestling on TV, you know, when it's supposed to be a "behind the scenes" view of what goes on. The acting, effects, script and direction are terrible. I've just laughed out loud at some of the effects because they're so ridiculously bad. Not in a good way, it's like your 7 year old school kid says "look daddy, look what I made you at school today" and you just laugh at them and tell them it's crap. The kind of people who'll enjoy this are the type who watch pro wrestling and are convinced it's not staged.

I am astounded on some of the reviews here claiming this is a B movie. This is a movie that you show to a class of students who want to learn how to make a movie and point and say, "this is the wrong way". And I've thought I've seen some horrible movies on the syfy channel. This actually manages to go a step below that spectrum. The acting is off the charts south and the dialogue is even further down there. The story is pretty dumb but I have seen worst in that department.

But you wanna know what gives this movie that little bit of extra crap that truly makes it extraordinarily bad? It is the editing and the cinematography. Almost every kill scene is looped over and over again without relief. And randomly, a mundane scene where an "actor" talks or does some kind of motion also loops. Why? It adds nothing to the movie and only frustrates you. And they will zoom in at like 10x on some scenes or use some gimmicky trick. You can tell they found these gimmicky tools on whatever program they were using to edit the movie and said"oh yea man that's crazy lets throw that in somewhere". The soundtrack is pretty crappy but then again I never cared for ICP. It feels forced on you, they introduce it and remove it quickly and abruptly.

It is obvious this movie was done lazily. Poor editing, poor acting, poor dialogue, etc. It looks like they only did one take on every single scene and didn't bother even trying to make a decent movie. Well when you put in nothing you get nothing. The only honest thing I can say I liked about the whole movie was one scene with the android dude and the chick. And that's it.

Oh, and you know what surprised the hell out of me? This movie was on SHOWTIME!?!?! I thought showtime was a premium competitor to HBO, why, who got this movie on there? What??

I watched this movie with the expectation that it would be a bad movie that was at least fun to watch. How wrong I was. This has to be the worst movie I have ever had the displeasure to sit through. I cannot think of a single aspect of this film that is not absolutely horrible. It plays like a 10-year-old with a new video camera got some friends together and asked them to improvise being macho. I can't even believe there was a script involved. If you watch this movie, you will regret that you wasted 90 minutes of your life that you will never get back. If you want to see a movie so bad that it's actually amusing, try Death Race 2000, with David Carradine. At least that film is laughable, not excruciatingly painful to watch. I find that I am angry at myself for sitting through the entire thing. Please do yourself a favor and miss this one completely.

Most Asylum movies are awful, but there is something compulsively watchable about them. Even for The Asylum though Death Racers was just a piece of rubbish. Visually, Death Racers was so slapdash that it not only gave me a headache but also made me dizzy. The colour scheme is nauseating, the editing is so choppy to the point that it's incoherent and the special effects look as though they only cost less than £5 to make. The soundtrack is annoyingly repetitive not just in the use of it but also the composition, and overall considering that I've never liked the style I just found it grating to listen to. Death Racers is appallingly written, I have not heard such atrocious dialogue in a long while, even for Steve the Hammer, while the story consists of predictable plotting, rushed pacing and very clumsily choreographed action sequences and you don't learn anything or care about the characters. The acting is also dire. Overall, a really awful film with no redeeming qualities even for The Asylum. 1/10 Bethany Cox