Le Projet Philadelphia : L'Expérience interdite

This remake of the 1980s cult movie was doomed from the start. It was made by Canadian filmmakers (strike one!) with Cinetel Films (strike two!) for the SyFy network (strike three, you're out!) Now, I will say that the screenplay does have a few good ideas here and there, though they are minor details instead of something bigger. The screenplay as a whole is a mess, however - there are a lot of things that are simply not explained or are completely missing. The movie felt like a quick first draft instead of something that had been gone over many times to patch up any shortcomings. Though had the screenplay been better, the movie would have suffered from a shabby look. The movie looks real cheap, even the scenes that don't depend on special effects or sets. The original movie wasn't anything earth-shaking, but it was a lot better in every department you can think of.

The Philadelphia Experiment (2012)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Decent remake of the 1984 film mainly just takes the basic plot and takes it into a new direction so those who loved the original movie and its love story can rest easy. In this version, a government agency is doing work on the original Philadelphia Experiment when something goes wrong and the ship Eldridge ends up floating around in time. The sole survivor (Nicholas Lea) ends up getting off the ship in 2012 and teams up with his granddaughter (Emilie Ullerup) to try and find out what's going on and how to stop it. I actually thought that the first hour of this film was better than anything in the original movie but sadly the final thirty-minutes start to go overboard but in the end we're still left with a fairly impressive movie and especially considering it aired on SyFy. What I enjoyed most about the first half is simply the confusion of the Bill Gardner character as he tries to figure out what went wrong in the 1943 experiment and how it has gotten him placed in 2012. I thought the early scenes between him and his granddaughter were quite entertaining and I thought the action scenes that followed with the two were well directed. The problem happens when the super secret government people start to show up with murder in their eyes and this is when the first loses its brain and fall off track. I'd say the superhuman powers that Gardner receives is also something that didn't work too well. I thought both Lea and Ullerup were extremely good in their roles and their performances made the film all the more enjoyable. Malcolm McDowell has a quite cameo but is a lot of fun and the original star Michael Pare is also on hand here so that should thrill fans of the 1984 film. I had just watched the original film days before this one and I said that the material was so strong that it really needed a bigger budget to fully capture everything it could. That didn't really happen with this movie as there's still something better that could come from the material but this here is still worth viewing.

Sy Fy gets no respect when it comes to "Another Sy Fy original ....".

This one isn't so bad of a production. But the story really doesn't do any justice to the lore of the Philadelphia Experiment.

I come to Sy Fy channel for simple entertainment, and this movie was OK in this regard. Although I sincerely wish that one day somebody with Steven Spielberg caliber talent would create an Indiana Jones level expose film about the Philadelphia Experiment.

One thing I have to give this movie credit is that it's beautifully shot.

For a low budget movie it's well crafted, and my hats off to the producers for keeping the production quality high.

Not so compelling of a story, and that's the problem of this movie, but this is about the level of production I come to expect from "Another Sy Fy original ....".

A group of scientists trying to create a cloaking device accidentally conjure up the USS Eldridge, a ship that disappeared in 1943. Now their only priority is to send it back.

While I did not see the 1980s version of this story, I am familiar with what allegedly happened in real life. I think this is a fine plot of what could have happened, even if it does not necessarily make logical sense.

Director Paul Ziller is SyFy's go-to guy and has made quite a few of their productions now, with varying degrees of success. I feel like Ziller really has a handle on how to make a low-budget science fiction film, as he has the formula down. The weakest part is always the special effects (the computer-generated effects), which are out of his control.

Of course, this film also suffers from having Emilie Ullerup, one of the worst actresses in the history of the universe. Her character is a bit hard to believe (a world-class hacker working as a waitress in a small town diner), but even if we accept that, Ullerup just kept overacting repeatedly. I felt no sympathy for her and think the film would have been much better if her scenes were just cut out completely.

And why did the police officer wear jeans?

Bad acting, bad writing, bad effects, bad everything. Don't waste your time. You have been warned.