Living Hell

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.

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.

Not at all what I expected, this was a good movie. A little like the Mist but better. There was even some scenes that would remind me of the alien films the plant seemed almost alive, not the mention very destructive. The Army was in fact very quick to move in and do what they like to do best and send in the plains and blow things up. I have to say that I thought the special effects were great and the story was well crafted. I recommend watching this film to people who enjoy science fiction. I do for-warn that there is some blood and Nudity in the movie so be sure that the kids are in bed before throwing this movie on.

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.

I insist on watching the movies on Sci-Fi because, well, I have to. I keep hoping someday there will be a hidden gem, or at least one with some cool special effects. This one was a little of both. While overgrown with B-movie clichés and iffy CGI effects, there were still some pretty interesting twists, and some genuinely creepy moments. I did get caught up in the race to defeat the -ah- monster (?), and I liked the acting of the two main characters, even if the dialog left them pretty thin. The story was a very nice diversion from the usual sort of humanoid-alien-or-zombie run wild. It was fun to watch. I thought the solution was maybe a little trite, but I enjoyed the film enough that I was OK with it. There were little glimpses of pretty intelligent writing sprinkled through the movie. It almost felt like a decent script that got stretched and produced and Sci-Fi-ized into a B-movie (C-movie?). But I think it still maintained some of the interesting parts of the premise, and played them out well. All in all, I enjoyed watching it, and it held my interest all the way to the end. I wonder why the Sci-Fi channel insists on matching cheesy special effects with cheesy acting and cheesy writing. Dr. Who is proof that good writing can carry really cheap effects. I think this movie was a big step in that direction, and I hope they go with it more.