Le jour des Triffides

Great book, there have been a couple of adaptations over the years, which were great, true to the text, but suffered from lack of budget. This appears to have the budget, but strangely starts off ok, but gets worser and worser! My bad grammar is on purpose. They should have let the triffids eat them after the first forty minutes of episode one!!

Two stars for effort of the cast with such a poor script. Started off OKay with a similar premise as the book, but totally, completely lost-the-plot early on. It turned into a very silly comic-book horror story full of very old and very tired clichés.

The book was never meant to be a 'horror story' about man-eating plants, but about us, about humanity, or a commentary on "Human Nature". For example, even when faced with a common enemy and such destruction, 'Man is still his own worst Enemy', is just one of the many themes explored in the book.

I will stick with the 1981 TV co-production version, which remains the best adaptation of this classic literary science-fiction novel.

The premise of this mini-series is the world is harnessing the oil from a carnivorous slow-moving plant for fuel. They have these plants that blind people before eating them contained in farms. Then comes the solar flares that blinds everybody who stares at them. Apparently everything wants to blind us. There are some survivors who didn't get blinded played by Joely Richardson, Dougray Scott, Jason Priestley, and Eddie Izzard.

The premise has two sci-fi creations. That's usually one too many. And that's before Eddie Izzard survive a plane crash by piling a bunch of floatation vests in the washroom. How he walks away is pure make believe. And what about the rest of the world? I'm sure there are whole sections of the world that was sleeping through the event. The problematic setups do pile on. If you're willing to forget all the problems with the setup, then the movie is acceptable apocalyptic TV fare. But that's asking too much for me.

I started with all possible good intentions: it was a BBC production and I am a fan of Doctor Who and even Torchwood; I have seen the original Day of the Triffids and I liked it (even if I thought the premise to be pretty hard to believe) and I was prepared to enjoy it as a holiday release, with not much substance in it.

This being said, I really enjoyed the start, even if clearly beset with budget issues. I replaced the set in my mind and went on. The premise was a bit ridiculous, but that was in the book, so OK. Then Joely Richardson entered the scene and it all went bad. I have seen her in other movies and she was a decent actress. So either my memory plays tricks on me or the director messed it up. Badly! All her lines were out of place, her behavior like taken from a blond girl joke and her acting appalling. Eddie Izzard did a decent role as the psychopath trying to take over London, the rest of the stars just played average and mostly pointless roles, roles which could have been played by any other actor.

The ending was a chaos of irrational behavior, bad acting, predictability and pointless narration supposed to "open our eyes". The ending really messed things up, both from the standpoint of character development and end feeling.

Bottom line: decent effort, but ultimately a failed one.

Looking at the cast list it should have been great and I am one who does not build up his expectations but I was expecting so much more. Pretty true to the book but it had no surprises. It could have been more exciting but the pace was slow for the most part and the triffids were not scary in the least. These actors are better than the script they were given and I am sure that some regret taking part. Eddie Izzard is an excellent baddie and the cinematography is very good but for me that is all I can say in it's favour. I prefer the 1981 TV series and even the film version has more going for it. Much as I like sci-fi and the book this is not one for my collection.