Living Hell

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.

Despite a good idea, I was not expecting much in all honesty from Living Hell considering it was from the notorious- in a negative way- Sci-Fi Channel. But it is one of their more tolerable movies, maybe not living up to making what happens truly hellish but it similarly doesn't live up in terms of horribleness either. It is far from perfect, the special effects/make-up looked often as if they were unfinished, the ending is really trite and a bit of a cop-out and the whole vines thing being linked to the military base was a stale plot point that could've been expanded upon to make it stick. On top of that, the characters- aside from the overly-obvious clichés- are nowhere near developed enough to be likable and with two exceptions the acting is pretty dire, Erica Leehrsen is beautiful but lacks charisma and needs more maturity in her acting. The two exceptions are Johnathan Schaech, who has some questionable lines sometimes but he is a likable and believable actor all the same, and James McDaniel, for the same reasons. Along with their performances, there are good things. For the Sci-Fi Channel, it doesn't look too bad. The scenery is nice to look at and doesn't look like someone's basements, and the editing has more clarity than you would expect. The music is a rise above the generic and over-bearing stuff I often here, while the script, even with some dialogue that doesn't always ring true, does have some intelligent touches and the story while not particularly original in terms of the telling of it(the borrowing from older movies) and the science as ever is enough to raise an eyebrow is never dull and actually has some suspenseful atmosphere. It also deserves credit for being a departure from the zombie and vampire movies I've seen a lot of(and considering the overall quality starting to get tired actually). The killings are decent as well, and some of the gore is enough to make the stomach churn without it being too overdone. So overall, tolerable Sci-Fi movie if not as terrifying(in what's going on) or as horrible(overall execution of movie) as you'd think. 5/10 Bethany Cox

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.

The premise and support for much of the argument of the movie is decent unlike that of regular SciFi fare. Given that zombie, slasher etc type flicks are the films usually shown on SciFi, this movie deserves consideration simply on originality. Much of what was suggested wasn't too far fetched and more reasonable than the basis of most of the movies that get the usual 3 or 4 rating. The acting is still terrible and James McDaniel seems to be the only competent actor in this project. Still, if movies in this genre worth a 0 get a 3 or a 4 instead then this movie deserves at least a 6 and thats what I'm giving it.