Living Hell

Oh yes, you've heard it right. Living Hell (or here incorrectly listed as Organizm) is a sci-fi channel movie that actually doesn't suck! Sure, while not the greatest monster movie ever, I still actually had a fun time with this despite its many clichés and plot holes. But hey, I wasn't looking for an Oscar movie. The story is set around a male teacher (Schaech) who breaks into a base to warn the civils not to demolish a New Mexico base, but they don't listen to him and head to the sub levels where they accidentally set a deadly organizm free. Most of the civils get murdered, the creature escapes, and one of the survivors (the beautiful Leerhsen girl from the 'Chainsaw redux) teams with the teacher to stop the organizm before it kills everything in its path. I enjoyed this predictable little movie mostly because the screenwriters knew they weren't making the most original movie, so they just went with it. There are a lot of scenes similar to other horror films (Alien among others), but the good acting and effective directing with many original camera angles makes it up for the very predictable and dull plot. Moreover, the monster is also pretty fake looking and not scary, but after all this was a sci-fi movie, so that didn't bother me. Like I said, it's not the greatest horror film ever, but I was entertained and that's the biggest reason why I'd recommend it. If you're ready to avoid clichés and some fake scenes, you'll enjoy this. Thumbs surprisingly up.

A neurotic geek crashes the gate at a closing military base, raving apocalyptic tales of woe. He warns everybody not to open a secret deadly vault that nobody knew about in the first place until this dummy told them. So they ignore his fanatic warnings, stupidly open it, and a lot of cast extras die.

Could have been better. Plot staples such as sinister covert government operations, a mindlessly brutal and effective extra-terrestrial killing machine, scary Indian tribal legends--not bad stuff. Has potential. But the story doesn't develop. Just more yelling, gratuitously violent deaths, and government stupidity. Also more poor acting. Turn off the brain, and it's just passable.

Despite a good idea, I was not expecting much in all honesty from Living Hell considering it was from the notorious- in a negative way- Sci-Fi Channel. But it is one of their more tolerable movies, maybe not living up to making what happens truly hellish but it similarly doesn't live up in terms of horribleness either. It is far from perfect, the special effects/make-up looked often as if they were unfinished, the ending is really trite and a bit of a cop-out and the whole vines thing being linked to the military base was a stale plot point that could've been expanded upon to make it stick. On top of that, the characters- aside from the overly-obvious clichés- are nowhere near developed enough to be likable and with two exceptions the acting is pretty dire, Erica Leehrsen is beautiful but lacks charisma and needs more maturity in her acting. The two exceptions are Johnathan Schaech, who has some questionable lines sometimes but he is a likable and believable actor all the same, and James McDaniel, for the same reasons. Along with their performances, there are good things. For the Sci-Fi Channel, it doesn't look too bad. The scenery is nice to look at and doesn't look like someone's basements, and the editing has more clarity than you would expect. The music is a rise above the generic and over-bearing stuff I often here, while the script, even with some dialogue that doesn't always ring true, does have some intelligent touches and the story while not particularly original in terms of the telling of it(the borrowing from older movies) and the science as ever is enough to raise an eyebrow is never dull and actually has some suspenseful atmosphere. It also deserves credit for being a departure from the zombie and vampire movies I've seen a lot of(and considering the overall quality starting to get tired actually). The killings are decent as well, and some of the gore is enough to make the stomach churn without it being too overdone. So overall, tolerable Sci-Fi movie if not as terrifying(in what's going on) or as horrible(overall execution of movie) as you'd think. 5/10 Bethany Cox

The premise and support for much of the argument of the movie is decent unlike that of regular SciFi fare. Given that zombie, slasher etc type flicks are the films usually shown on SciFi, this movie deserves consideration simply on originality. Much of what was suggested wasn't too far fetched and more reasonable than the basis of most of the movies that get the usual 3 or 4 rating. The acting is still terrible and James McDaniel seems to be the only competent actor in this project. Still, if movies in this genre worth a 0 get a 3 or a 4 instead then this movie deserves at least a 6 and thats what I'm giving it.

This is easily one of the better SciFi channel offerings. Competently acted, directed and written it was enjoyable and well worth watching. The only sub-standard aspect was some of the computer generated effects (blood spatter, fire) were distractingly unrealistic. The storyline certainly borrowed from other movies, but there were enough novel touches to keep it interesting. The pace drags a little toward the end, but it is head and shoulders above much of the dreck they have put out over the years.

I hope this signals a commitment on the part of the SciFi channel to improve their offerings. How the same channel can produce superb fare like "The Lost Room" also produces crapfests like "Path of Destruction" baffles me.