Bullet Points: Screamers: The Hunting
I love a good sci-fi flick. There are so many classic movies that start out with the same general storyline but end up with some crazy twist or a combination of kickass characters and amazing action scenes that I’m willing to try out pretty much any movie that has a decent looking poster. Screamers: The Hunting was a movie that I found in my local used DVD store and immediately snatched up. Throw in Stephen Amell and Lance Henriksen and I’m more than happy to give this puppy a try.
Synopsis: A military team is sent on a rescue mission to the planet Sirius 6-B after an S.O.S. call from the once thought deserted planet. The team learns that the planet was deserted because of the war against the “screamers”, a robot creation designed to help the miners but ones that would eventually turn into the hunters and killers of all the inhabitants of the planet.
- Cryo Sleep: Screamers has a runtime of 95 minutes and it spends a great deal of that time dropping cliché after cliché on the audience. That starts with the soldiers waking up from their cryosleep in the same way that we’ve seen a hundred times before. It seems like every single space combat movie is just trying to recreate Aliens, and, of course they are, that’s probably the best space movie ever made. That doesn’t mean that all these movies can’t come up with their own ways to introduce their characters or show how rugged they are than to just copy Aliens.
- Is this a rescue mission or another bughunt?: After the cliché action already shown, I was expecting one of the soldiers to make a comment during their briefing like the one made by Bill Paxton in Aliens.
- Bonzai: I just started writing this review and I’m already getting tired of talking about all the scenes in Screamers that were pulled straight from Aliens. Much like Vasquez and the Lt., the tough guy sergeant gets his last stand by doing the old suicide grenade gimmick.
- Cutters: When the survivors of the planet take in the soldiers, they inspect them to make sure that they’re not screamers in disguise. Apparently the only way they know how to check them out is to cut them and make sure their blood is real. Now, if I was going to cut myself and show that I wasn’t a robot, I wouldn’t make a deep and painful cut on the palm of my hand. Maybe a small cut on the side of my arm or something but slicing at my palm would be the least human thing that I could ever see myself doing.
- Future Armor: I hope you all enjoyed the futuristic motorbike armor as much as I did.
- A Friendly Face: You may not recognize most of the actors in the film but one that you’ll most likely get excited over seeing is the Green Arrow, himself, Stephen Amell! He still doesn’t get top billing but Amell is certainly one of the better actors in this science fiction tale. Just one thing… if he’s supposed to be a survivor from a war, hidden in a cave for a number of years, how in the hell does he get his trademark buzzcut?
- Gore: I just assume that most science fiction movies are going to use CGI as much as possible but Screamers does quite the opposite. They uses prosthetics as often as possible (which can be extremely time consuming) and only use CGI effects when absolutely necessary. That means that there is a pretty serious amount of gore from all of the dudes who get killed by the screamers.
- Oh yeah, Lance is in this: By the time that Lance Henriksen finally showed up in this movie I had forgotten that he was even in it. He plays a very similar character to Lawrence Fishburne from Predators, and it was a welcome addition to the film.
- It’s a twist that we all saw coming: I think you get the point.
- This movie is pro-life: By the end of the film, I couldn’t help but notice that the filmmakers were very subtly trying to show us that life begins at robotic conception.
The Verdict: The effects kind of reminded me of Blade 2 and the story more than reminded me of Aliens but if you put it all together you get a pretty entertaining movie. It wasn’t award-winning or anything but there were enough good things to outweigh the bad. If you get a chance, check it out.
