Don’t you just hate when a movie has all the pieces to be awesome, looks great in the trailer, and then sucks a thick bulbous one when you actually sit down to watch it? Mutant Chronicles is one of those films for me. It’s got Thomas Jane, The Modern Day Caveman, and Sean Pertwee. It’s got tons of killing, tons of brutality, and loads of fight sequences. Yet, the film is so flawed that not even all of these great strengths can keep the film from sinking under the weight of shot after shot of terrible CGI. The film is more like a cartoon than an actual movie.

The movie is one of those “humanity on the verge of annihilation” tales. Sometime in the future, the world is at war. The constant warring awakens a machine that turns people into crazy mutants. Humanity is quickly overrun and things are looking bleaker than the sales of the last Bobby Brown album. They have one chance… a crack group of soldiers from all over the world is sent on a suicide mission to destroy the machine that is creating the mutants. It’s actually not that bad of a story, and if it didn’t look as dumb as Sky Craptain and the World of Tomorrow, it might have actually been pretty good.

Director Simon Hunter does some good things and some bad things with this flick, which contributes to its mediocre score. The brutality and the violence of the film is much appreciated, but Hunter’s hyper-quick editing and nonstop barrage of scenes that look far too similar gets old after awhile. Hunter’s film moves too fast and the pace of the movie feels unnatural. Time doesn’t seem to exist in this world. The imagery is also uneven. While there are a few killer scenes here and there, with the highlight being the opening fifteen minutes or so, everything seems to fade into over-produced blahs-ville after a while. Hunter also fails to get good performances out of his cast, and many of the supporting characters are badly acted, while normally strong genre vets like Ron Perlman and Thomas Jane are clearly not at their best. This subpar acting falls on the shoulders of the director, because in the right hands Perlman and Jane are both awesome.

Speaking of the cast, Perlman (The Last Supper, Hellboy) is actually pretty bad in this flick. Maybe it’s the goofy costume he wears around, or the fact that every scene is shot on some green screen soundstage, but he almost feels as if he was doing a runthrough instead of actually acting out the role. Thomas Jane (The Punisher, The Mist) isn’t much better, and he is wasted in the film with a character that is a little too bland for my tastes. Sean Pertwee (Doomsday, Wilderness) is the one solid character in the film, but he disappears for long chunks of time. John Malkovich’s performance is absolutely terrible and reminds of Ben Kingsley’s ultimate shitty role in BloodRayne. This is definitely an embarrassing performance for the normally reliable and quirky Malkovich.

The special effects in the film are pretty damn bad. If I was the producer and I was footing the bill for this CGI I would feel completely ripped off. The CGI is cartoony and way too prevalent in the film. There is just so much of the stuff that it becomes ridiculous. The quality makes it even worse. When you’re laughing at CGI blood splatters that look like neon paint, you know your film has a problem. They might as well have not had any real actors and went completely CGI with the damn film.

Mutant Chronicles is utterly forgettable. It’s not something you need to see, but it can be sat through… with some beer preferably. If you can’t stand subpar CGI and bad acting, then you’ll want to stay far away from this one. The story is ok, and some of the violence rocks, but there really is no reason to go out of your way for this one.

Final Synopsis: The movie isn’t all that great. Wait until you can see it for free.

Points Lost: -2 for terrible CGI, -1 for bad directing, -1 for a spastic directing style, -1 for some pretty bad acting all around

Lesson Learned: In the future, soldiers will wear uniforms that look like they are from World War II.

Burning Question: How much does an actor make to show up on set, deliver a handful of lines poorly, and then disappear? I want that job.

Mutant Chronicles
5/10

Tags: 2008, bad CGI, Devon Aoki, horror, john malkovich, latest movie reviews, pras, recent3, ron perlman, sci-fi, science fiction, sean pertwee, shauna macdonald, shitty cgi, Simon Hunter, Thomas Jane, tom wu