Clones: The Recreator Chronicles

To be honest with all of you, this movie impressed me. My expectations were low based on some reviews elsewhere. I usually ignore reviews so that I might make my own judgment. I'm glad I continued that trend because I would have skipped this had I followed the majority of reviews I read. The only thing that really bugged me was the reactions of the three mains. They seemed oddly comfortable with what was happening. I guess if you have actors with zero emotional range you can't have them get too emotional. Otherwise, I enjoyed it. The ending was pretty nice too. Kind of an FU at the end. Nicely done overall. John de Lancie is the name in this flick but don't look forward to too much screen time from the veteran. His role is a quick flash of about five minutes total. This story centers more on the three friends and their experiences on the island.

RECREATOR has potential but turns into a general mish-mash of ideas with way too much of the "teenagers running in the woods" type scenes to recommend it. It's a dimly lit adventure in which a trio of teenagers visit a remote island and take shelter in a mysterious installation when a storm beckons. Pretty soon they find themselves at the mercy of their own clones, which are set to destroy them.

Cloning has always been an intriguing idea in cinema but the idea here is workable at best. Indeed so little is made of the originality of the premise that any random monster or human villain could have been the antagonist. Too much of it feels like a teen horror flick while the thought-provoking sci-fi angle of the story is swept aside.

It doesn't help that the production values have led to a dim and gloomy looking movie with non-existent special effects. The thinly-written characters are rather trying and despite the best efforts of the actors involved none of them are remotely likable, so you end up having no interest in what happens come the end. It's a pity.

When compared to the big budget Hollywood stuff indies just can't compete, they don't have the budget or the names. But it all depends what you're looking for. For me this was a fun movie. Compared to other indies I think the movie is very well done. The actors were good, maybe not award winning but good enough that it was easy to watch. God I've seen some horrible acting in indies and compared to those these guys were Oscar winners! The story was original and so what if things were unbelievable, that's why it's called fiction right? The main thing I will say is it was an enjoyable movie, kept me interested to the end and got me involved in both the story and characters. I think that's pretty good! I give it a 7/10 easily.

Craig Carlson (Alexander Nifong), his girlfriend Tracy Bernstein (Stella Maeve) and their friend Derek Johnson (J. Mallory-McCree) row to the Brewster Island in a canoe to spend the weekend camping on the island. Tracy is not used to go camping and needs to defecate and she does not absorb the idea of going to the woods with a shovel to bury the poop. She sees a house nearby and she decides to ask to the owners to use the toilet. However there is nobody home and she finds the key of the front door and uses the toilet. During the night, there is a storm and the trio decides to spend the night in the house. However, early in the morning, the owners of the house return and they hide in the basement, where they find two corpses inside a plastic bag. However they are caught and forced to dig a hole to bury the bodies. Out of the blue, they are saved by three naked persons that are exactly like themselves. Soon they learn that they have been cloned and their duplicates are made of their dark side but more strong and intelligent.

"CLONED: The Recreator Chronicles" could have been a good B-movie with an interesting story. However, there is a total lack of humor, despite the absurd situation that all the characters are cloned from their poops associated to an invention from a scientist of atom bomb and lightning from the storm. Anyway this movie is watchable and entertains. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): "O Lado Negro" ("The Dark Side")

CLONED: THE RECREATOR CHRONICLES is a sci-fi thriller that relies on suspense over explosive action. It puts three young characters -two male, one female- into the position of going up against their own replacements. Replacements that seem to be better in every way, and know everything they know.

This is a pretty creepy concept, and works fairly well. The title comes into play when the trio discovers what's really going on and that a diabolical plot is under way.

There are other "clones" involved as well, and they're equally unsettling in an INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS sort of way.

The only problem is that the excitement level isn't very high, which wouldn't be an issue if the story was a bit stronger and more developed...