Super Hybrid

Now a lot of people review this film as being serious bad or just bad but its not been given its fair due's. The concept behind this film in horror sense is the claustrophobic concept, where you trapped in a parking lot with no escape & something evil is out for blood. This is where it gets interesting because if you put yourself in there shoes knowing what a car looks like & should feel yet this one thing isn't what it appears to be this is where the real terror of the film comes into play. Yes it not the best or Oscar winner film & its not meant to be, this film is what its meant to be a well made quiet low budget film that entertaining to watching. It one of those rare film that mite seem really bad but its still a good watching film, mine that not everyone will think this film is good but its all down to the viewer watching the film. For me I found this film pretty good to watch its not scary but still entertaining.

The acting and action was good. Just can't get past the big hole in plot line where owner of garage had doors welded shut. That's cute and all if you don't understand what tools do. Any garage will have an angle grinder, there is actually a scene where one of the guys was using it to build their little trap. This tool is meant to cut metal and easily would cut through welds. And that's assuming they didn't have any metal cutting saws or air compressed cutoffs which every garage would have also. These aren't million dollar tools, most Homeowners have at least a couple of these things just laying around.

The latest 'horror bad guy' to grace our screens is a car - a car that kills people. Um, and that's about it. I could leave the review there. If you can deal with that concept you may just like the film.

Said nasty car is trapped in a large garage (certainly not your average Kwik Fit) with people who, for some reason, are equally trapped IN with it as it is with them. I watched Shark Night 3D recently - a film about killer sharks. Now, the thing about sharks is that they're kind of constricted to water and not too good on land, in the air and anywhere else. Hybrid is a bit like that. A car is only really good on flat roads, but, luckily for the metal monster, our hapless heroes find every excuse to sort of run around a bit in front of them.

It has all the horror clichés you've seen in all the other horror films out there. It's pretty daft and the acting is questionable - certainly in the first third (I was contemplating whether it was actually a foreign film and had been dubbed, but you get used to it as it goes on). You have the sensible woman, the daft plank who wants to catch a monster car instead of leaving, cell phones that don't work and an ensemble of unlikeable characters who you won't miss when they start to attack a large metal beast with a bit of wood (or something equally questionable).

If you've seen a film where a beastie stalks a load of slightly inept people, you've basically seen this. If you fancy seeing idiots stalked by a car that sees the world as if it was a Predator alien, give it a try. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to buy a bike.

Weak characterisation, poor editing & no necessary sense of ever-present dread hurt this movie immeasurably.

The actors are all fine but it is hard to care for their characters when they are so thinly-drawn and possess no grounded motivations for their relationships with one another.

Overall, there is no compelling reason for this film to exist. It offers no social commentary on the existence of the automobile, where on Earth the shapeshifting monster came from (& what it's purpose is) and why something as hard-to-manoeuvre-in-small-spaces as a motor car could ever truly be seen as threatening, scary or in need of being hunted down like a wild animal in an underground car park.

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.