Living hell - Le radici del terrore

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.

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.

No offense to stumpmee77, but to give this movie a "glowing, glowing report" is like calling McDonalds a whole foods supermarket. "Living Hell" is not only the title of the movie, but the experience one has while watching it. I won't go into detail (it's too painful). The general plot follows the sci-fi model of government experiment gone horribly wrong. Perhaps fans of this movie who believe it to be unique and exciting have never seen a sci-fi original in their lives, and to them I suggest sitting down in front of their televisions this Saturday and watching the newest film. We have the troubled protagonist, who's insane mother carved some plot device into his hand (it turns out he has a pretty messed up family - his dad's a government experiment). There's the saucy military-associated female cohort of his; this movie would not be a sci-fi movie unless the two of them hooked up. But they do more than just "hook up," why, the protagonist rubs his blood all over her in a scene that is equal parts confusing and disgusting. Really, there are so many factual inaccuracies in this movie I am left flabbergasted. Scientifically, this would be like if a movie decided to save California from separating from the rest of America due to plate tectonics it would be necessary to detonate nuclear bombs into the city. Oh, wait, sci-fi aired a movie that did just that. This movie is almost as absurd as a movie that would blow up the Loch Ness Monster in Michigan. Oh, yeah, sci-fi nailed that sucker too. But I digress. If one needs proof to realize this movie is not-so-good, I would direct them to the scene in which, for no reason, a minor female character rips off her shirt. The only "fear factor" present in this movie was the fear of my IQ dropping while watching. I suggest this movie for anyone who likes to laugh.

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.

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.