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.

The story-line is familiar: An old Army Base. A Classified Cold War Weapons Experiment. A buried secret that should never have seen the light of day.

But the Telling of this War/Monster story is edgy and quickly paced-- without the usual ludicrous Hollywood interpersonal sidetracking and with believable characters. The viewer is caught up in HOW quickly the worst case scenario can be averted-- if it can be.

Also the beginning flashbacks are used incisively and with spare story-telling economy while increasing the tension to a nicety.

This Saturday Night Horror flick was done well.

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.

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.

The movie begins well with an interesting if not original take on the outbreak/monster escapes genre. However it doesn't remain any good for any length of time. The story premise is not bad, but the plot is terrible, the script is abysmal, most of the acting is dreadful, Erica Leerhsen is okay but how John Schaech's completely wooden and cheesy acting ever gets him work is beyond me. The physical effects are okay but the cgi is totally below par.

The premise: a boy is branded on his hands by his mother just before she kills herself and her husband. The boy never forgets level whatever it was and vault 12 because it's on his hands!! Cue years later and the army base which the message relates to is being decommissioned and the boy now a man remembers his mother's warning "don not disturb vault 12" so he drives into the base to warn em all.

Fans of intelligent sci-fi will despair. Brits (we're an intelligent bunch) don't even bother unless you want ninety minutes of shouting at the screen at the stupidity of it. But if that's your bag then go ahead, it's probably worth watching just for this gratuitous soft core 'cover me in blood' scene, like Arnie covered himself in mud in predator- it's so cringeworthingly bad they all deserve an award.

Or you could just skip to that scene and save yourself all the trouble - roughly 1hr 10 mins in.