Living Hell

Oh yes, you've heard it right. Living Hell (or here incorrectly listed as Organizm) is a sci-fi channel movie that actually doesn't suck! Sure, while not the greatest monster movie ever, I still actually had a fun time with this despite its many clichés and plot holes. But hey, I wasn't looking for an Oscar movie. The story is set around a male teacher (Schaech) who breaks into a base to warn the civils not to demolish a New Mexico base, but they don't listen to him and head to the sub levels where they accidentally set a deadly organizm free. Most of the civils get murdered, the creature escapes, and one of the survivors (the beautiful Leerhsen girl from the 'Chainsaw redux) teams with the teacher to stop the organizm before it kills everything in its path. I enjoyed this predictable little movie mostly because the screenwriters knew they weren't making the most original movie, so they just went with it. There are a lot of scenes similar to other horror films (Alien among others), but the good acting and effective directing with many original camera angles makes it up for the very predictable and dull plot. Moreover, the monster is also pretty fake looking and not scary, but after all this was a sci-fi movie, so that didn't bother me. Like I said, it's not the greatest horror film ever, but I was entertained and that's the biggest reason why I'd recommend it. If you're ready to avoid clichés and some fake scenes, you'll enjoy this. Thumbs surprisingly up.

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.

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.

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.