Rating: D+
Dir: Matt Yeager
Star: Shey Bland, Eric Halsell, John Patrick McCauley, Casey Halsell
I winced on seeing Sean-Michael Argo’s name crop up in the opening credits as one of the writers here. I’d bumped into some of his output before on Girls With Guns, and it was borderline unwatchable. At least relatively, this is… not so bad? The main problem is massive over-ambition. It wants to create an entire dystopian, post-apocalyptic world, but is limited by resources to a couple of apartments, a random back-alley and a slew of mocked-up newspaper headlines. Oh, and voice-overs. So. Many. Voice-overs. I think the makers were going for a film noir feel. They should probably have stopped to think whether this was a good fit for the cyberpunk nightmare universe the script demands.
In this world, there was a zombie epidemic, and in the aftermath, the population has been divided into the haves, who live in walled enclaves, and the have-nots who inhabit “The Sprawl” outside [it’s a bit like Battle Angel]. Providing “entertainment” for the masses is Max (Halsell) – quotes used advisedly, since his output consists largely of snuff movies, involving either zombies or those unfortunate enough to fall into his debt. His top artiste is Johnny Sunshine (Shey), who has no qualms about her work – indeed, she positively enjoys it (top). But the bloom is beginning to come off the sales of her output. Max decides to rejuvenate his brand, and hires a corrupt cop, luring him with enough money to escape The Sprawl, to make Johnny star in a snuff film – from the other side.
Despite some reasonably effective use of animation, I think even in 2008, this probably needed about another hundred million on the budget to do the story justice. The makers certainly should have set their sights lower, more in keeping with what their resources could deliver. Which, apparently, did not include much in the way of professional performances, this being Eric Halsell’s sole acting credit. Bland, at least, doesn’t live down to her surname, even if she dressed entirely in the “slutty Trinity from The Matrix” aisle at Party City. Her level of gleeful commitment to the violence, is sadly lacking from everyone else, none of whom make the slightest impression.
Having someone who could handle the action scenes would have been a help as well. Watching Ms. Sunshine (and, to be fair, everyone else) go through “battles” at not much more than walking pace is underwhelming. It’s another area where the makers needed to cut their cloth according to what they have, since bad fight sequences are probably worse than no fight sequences. It also feels like so much effort went into the scenario, they forgot to come up with a proper plot. Even at well short of eighty minutes long, there just wasn’t enough going on to hold my attention. I’d not mind if this got remade, by a proper film-maker (maybe Brandon Cronenberg?) and with a real budget. As is, this is not much more than a rough first draft of storyboards.