Tuesday, 5 July 2011

Hybrid

I'm trying to imagine being a fly on the wall while this movie was being pitched.
Pitcher: OK get this it's about a shape shifting car that eats people.
Studio exec: You sir are a genius. Here's a half a million dollars go make me a movie.

It's really hard to say which is more insane the fact that someone had the balls to pitch this or that there was a studio besides SyFy that was insane enough to green light it but either way while it's far from perfect this is a decent wee B movie.

Part of what makes it good is that the cast manage not to burst out laughing at every scene because it's an incredibly silly movie to the extent that it's hard not to think that everyone involved realised just how ridiculous it was and decided to play it dead straight just to mess with your head.
The scene about one third of the way in where one of the characters figures out what the car is and explains it highlights exactly what I'm getting at.

The actual idea isn't terrible and while this is marketed as a straight horror movie it's definitely a B movie in spirit. Having the the movie set in an underground garage helps it retain some tension as the car stalks the staff and if it was set out in the city then it would have probably made the concept a lot harder to buy into (if that's possible) because it would just jump from death scene to death scene because there wouldn't be any real need for the cast to work together when there's a whole city worth of people to use as fodder.

Some of the death scenes are fairly well done and creative but lack any real punch due to the lack of gore and some shoddy editing.

The biggest let down is the special effects in the final act. It might have been better just not to show the whole creature because the CGI is pretty bad and the creature itself looks like a cross between The Blob and the creatures from The Langoliers.
Apparently parts of the movie were shot in 3D so I wonder if this was one of them because a lot of the scenes with the monster seem designed to highlight the technology.

The monster/possessed car genre is pretty niche and by nature requires you to suspend your disbelief a lot but if you're having a night in with friends and want something fairly ridiculous to watch that doesn't require a lot of thought and you can poke fun at like you would a friends crappy second hand car then it's worth at least checking out.

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