Actually, it's the Matrix without the budget, the actors, the script, the music, the special effects, the choreography...well, you get the idea. It's also a little bit of Videodrome-style evolutionary musings and S&M thrown in for good measure.
That's not to say it's a total waste of money. On the contrary, this really is one of the better Full Moon Films out there. The creatures are fairly well-done, especially the cyborg-moderator Wetwire, although the puppet-animations are hilarious...sometimes creatures seem to be thrown at the actors and the final monster looks like a costume I used to wear during Halloween promotions at the local costume shop.
Still, there are worse movies to rip off than the Matrix--and this movie is pretty blatant about it. Bradbury is an intimidating-looking black guy in shades wearing a leather trench-coat (his is sleeveless so we won't forget we're watching HorrorVision) who teaches awkward young white hacker Dez that he is the promised one--um, make that seven--who the machines fear will end their reign on Earth. I kept waiting for everybody to start popping red and blue pills...
Still, the ideas are clever, if vague, and the apocalyptic feel of a world slowly going mad somehow manages to work, despite being shown almost no images of the chaos we're told is erupting around the country. The Wetwire sequence alone is almost creepy enough to warrent a rental, and there are some other nice touches in the film.
But, as has been pointed out before, the movie ends just when the plot really starts to pick up. Furthermore, the pacing in this movie is bizarre--twenty minutes are spent on dramatic character development, then Bradbury appears and the heroes suddenly find themselves in a scene that should have been the film's climax, and then they spend the rest of the movie driving through a desert to a battle that seems to have little consequence to the plot, and isn't nearly as impressive as some of the things seen earlier.
It's still worth seeing, mainly for the Wetwire sequence--you'll see what I mean when you watch it, and some self-aware humor that lets us know that the movie-makers aren't taking all this too seriously either. It really is one of the best Full Moon movies out there: it's just that, as of yet, that's not saying much...
