Super Hybrid

The IMDb rating for this movie is 4 stars. No, no, no, no, no ----Nooooo! To be fair, this movie is nowhere under 5 stars. I think it deserves 6. It's about a shape-shifting "Super Hybrid" (they call it) that assumes the form of a car to hunt and attract victims to it (Come on! You're a horror vet. You've seen and heard crazier ideas). So people step into the car, peer into it, or generally get too close to it --and they're lunch. Of course the Hybrid is able to go from any make or model to any other as suits it. So reader, is that really your car parked at the corner? Best check under the hood before you get in.

The movie starts out with the Hybrid, sleek and black, cruising the Chicago streets one night. There are some good shots of it from different angles (including nice sky views). It not only looks cool, but ominous and deadly; predatory. Shortly it drives thru a back alley some place and waits for any sucker who will take an interest in it. It will be a nice night for it because 2 do.

Later, as it is going WHO KNOWS WHERE, it either accidentally or deliberately has an accident. It is taken to the Chicago District Garage (so the sign says) which is presently under repair and so is not accepting any more cars now. The guy who towed the Hybrid there tells the mechanic some sob story about a pregnant wife and the mechanic allows him to leave the car there. Big mistake!

The people who work at the garage, 7 in all; 2 women and 5 men, including the boss (an obnoxious guy named Ray) become trapped inside with the Hybrid. The emergency exit doesn't work because Ray "the genius" welded it shut. Even sealed off windows. "Why'd he do that Boloxxxi?" --Well reader, he said he wanted to keep junkies out. Apparently he's never heard of doors that only open from the inside --or with keys either, that he could have conveniently hung near the door or kept on his person. To top things off, it's a weekend and no one was coming by until Monday morning. I think we can both agree here that predators love stupid people.

You know, I first became aware of this movie a few months back when I rode up to the IMDb website on my trusty steed Hewlett Packard. "Easy, HP", I said, "Whoa, boy! It's only the IMDb website. Nothing to fear". So I checked out the movie, saw the ratings and what some people said about it. Discouraged, I mounted HP again and rode off into the Cyber sunset. A few months later I returned again to check Super Hybrid's rating; no change. I'm a big horror movie fan so I decided that at 4 stars it can't be that bad. I was not optimistic.

To my surprise and delight I enjoyed the movie. It was a solid horror flick. What I learned is that you can generally rely on a consensus of people's opinions when they are to the extreme; very bad or very good (3 stars or less, 7 stars or more). But something close to the middle can be deceptive because it is possible that it could be plus or minus 1 or 2 more stars. In which case, it badly falls thru the IMDb ratings crack as either a better or worse movie than it actually is.

In this instance, Super Hybrid is 1 or 2 more stars better than it is given. In closing, let me say reader that I felt obliged to get some justice for this entertaining movie. You know, like someone who sets out to clear the name of someone wrongly accused of something. This movie is wrongly accused of being only 4 stars. It's better than that. Enjoy. Away, Hewlett! Justice has been served! Love, Boloxxxi.

... movie? I think I meant something else, but having watched this at the Fantasy Film Festival I can tell you there is a reason why it has not been released yet. And it's not anything positive either. On the other hand, this could be the perfect party movie (I won't say ever though). A movie to rival your favorite "It's so bad, it is actually fun to watch" movie.

I'm not sure if the actors would like to have that on their CV (especially Oded F., who is the most recognizable after all), but then again they played in it, shouldn't they know what they did? Then again with CG and editing maybe they don't. And it all looks and feels very ridiculous. Dialogue is ... well let's say another part of the whole "Party" feeling. The strangest thing is, that the movie tries to play it straight, when in fact it is so ridiculous ... If that was on purpose, than I might have underestimated it ...

I admit that I walked into this movie thinking it was going to be dumb. I thought that Christine was one of Stephen King's weaker novels (and John Carpenter's movie version was similarly weak), but I tried to be as open-minded as possible. The first third of the movie, which is mysterious and interesting, was enough to make me think that perhaps some of the reviews on here were a bit too harsh. The score is also quite good, and it's used to great effect in the movie. Once the movie starts in earnest, however, it becomes formulaic and boring, though it picks up again near the climax.

The director did the French cult movie Malefique, which I liked, but it essentially boiled down to Hellraiser in a jail cell with painfully, self-consciously quirky characters. This movie dispenses with the overly quirky characters to give you somewhat bland and generic characters, thanks to the dismal writing of Benjamin Carr (the genius responsible for writing Thirteen Ghosts, Hellraiser: Deader, and a whole slew of Charles Band movies). Though the actors infuse their characters with some personality, none of them are particularly memorable or even interesting. There's a bit of pointless, filler back story on some of them, but, really, they're just meant to be nameless, forgettable fodder for a killer car. It's unfortunate that the scenes involving characterization or back story feel like filler, because I think the actors could have done some pretty decent performances given better material. Still, for a low budget movie about a car that eats people, the performances were credible. The nice guys were likable and the douchebags were appropriately unlikeable.

The real problem I had with this movie (besides the concept of a car that eats people, of course), was that it just gets plain *boring* near the middle. Humans bicker over who the leader is. Killer car makes ominous growling noises as it sneaks up on them. Humans scatter and run for their lives. Killer car chases after them -- though not driving fast enough to quite run them down -- until the scene drags on for several minutes. Repeat several times. It's just not very interesting.

After the killer car has eaten a few people, pruning down the cast, the pacing gets a bit better and the action scenes become a bit more interesting. Unfortunately, the low budget CGI comes to the forefront here, whereas it was previously used somewhat sparingly. For the apparent budget, the CGI isn't all that bad, but if you're used to something like James Cameron's Avatar, I think you'll be a bit disappointed.

I don't think this movie quite deserves its 3.x rating, but it's definitely not something that I'd recommend to casual horror/thriller fans. For junkies like me, it's enjoyable enough for a watch, as long as you're not too demanding.

I saw the trailer and i thought it would be interesting. I thought it would be like Christine. However, once the movie starts the characters almost immediately know what the car really is, and want to capture it. It's an incredible being lets capture it instead of destroying it. For the remainder of the movie it's just car chases in a garage. It really doesn't keep the interest for long. When you reach the middle of the movie you really want to fast-forward to see the ending. The monster is not too bad, but we are used to good (greater) looking monsters in other movies. All in all a fun movie but not good enough. You won't watch it twice.

I bought the 3d version on e bay which only played in 2d which was a bad start.I've seen worse produced films but it really is daft.You have to be some horror geek to even entertain this.