Mutants (2008)

I really don't recall seeing the mutant on the cover. A sugar company is run by bad characters and worse actors. Together with a guy with a bad Russian accent, they kidnap street urchins and experiment on them with a substance that will make sugar more addicting (give me a break.). It seems the kidnappers error and take a couple who aren't street urchins, one of which is related to two people who work for the same sugar company. A company called "Shadowrock" (Blackstone?) is responsible for the security of the experiment area, which is in an abandoned warehouse. The movie is light on mutants. The warehouse is eventually set ablaze using cartoonish computer generated special effects, which wasn't much better than holding a match in front of a camera. The beginning of the film is a 5 minute narration during the credits of a guy who tells us his mission was to watch, gather intelligence and not get involved. He informs us of this in numerous different ways and sometimes repeats the old ones, just to be sure we have this relatively unimportant plot point. He does some minor intrusive narration during the film. While hoping he is the first to die, alas he lives for a possible sequel. The movie finally gets to the interesting point: Millions of tons of infected sugar have left the mill and we have forgotten the word, "recall." Human attacking infected mutants are poised to roam the world, the movie promised by the box... now roll end credits. NO! THIS ISN'T 28 DAYS LATER MEETS I AM LEGEND.

Manufacturer Braylon, who owns the Just Rite Sugar Company, hires biochemist Sergei to design a food additive to increase consumer return rate. Instead, the additive changes human test subjects into overactive and voracious mutants.'Nothing is going to derail our plans.' That is a clear indication that stated plans will fail, and there will be lots of collateral damage.During the first half of this film, the human test subjects are only kidnapped and maltreated, and a few are murdered, namely the ones who escape. Experimentation is still going on.During the second half of the film, the breakthrough in the sugar additive is made, and the monsters start being created. What started as purely chemical research somehow has a viral element. Griff, Erin, and Sykes find Ryan and attempt to escape with him. Then the violence really starts. The cavalry arrives to exterminate anything living to contain the outbreak before it spreads to the general uninfected population. ----Scores----Cinematography: 0/10 I've seen 70k budget films with two levels of camera work better than this. Dark, fuzzy, grainy, low contrast. The daytime footage is almost as bad. Much of it looks like bad telephone capture. Lousy CGI for blowing up the lab.Sound: 4/10 OK some of the time, hollow and poor too much of the time. Irritating incidental music.Acting: 2/10 Michael Ironside and Steven Bauer were competent, but most of the others delivered performances like those in a bad high school play. Erin is supposed to be Griff's daughter, but she looks like his older sister. Brilliant casting.Screenplay: 1/10 Almost all the film is a flashback that does not include the only two competent actors: brilliant. The jokes are non-witty and flat. How this many murders committed in open daylight would not be noticed is hard to figure. The interaction between Erin and her father was unconvincing. Ryan getting kidnapped and held for days without being noticed is absurd. Motivation? Try another film. Business logic? Forget that too.

The title Mutants was a questionable one to begin with, but as I do like zombie movies when they're good I went ahead anyway. Now I wish I hadn't. For one thing, I was actually waiting all the time for a zombie to show up and to no avail, very like having Fred Flintstone but without the Yabba-Dabba-Doo. If these creatures in Mutants were trying to pass off as zombies they failed abysmally on that front, while not as badly designed as the zombies in a film like Vampegeddon they still look really laughable. And they don't have any menace or intrigue to them whatsoever. And I am angry also at how Mutants wasted its cast. Michael Ironside and Steven Bauer are good actors but, aside from Ironside having the best moment, are saddled with material so poor that they can't do anything with it. Louis Herthum looks as though he's got tears in his eyes, and who can blame him really. The characters they have to play are not only stereotypical, but also get on your nerves and you learn nothing about them, while the dialogue is nothing but cheese and awkwardness. The story has no suspense or any sense of horror, it is very thin and predictable in construction and in the end it feels like there is nothing to it. Mutants even is poorly made, the photography and editing were so choppy and the creature effects as mentioned were laughable. All in all, an awful movie that you actually question the point of it all. 1/10 Bethany Cox

In fact I was out to find the French movie "Mutants" but ran into this stinker on Blu Ray for a few euro's, new I mean. Cover looked okay, indeed a mutant reflecting in the glasses of a gas mask. Two names on it, Steven Bauer and Michael Ironside. Two famous names. First research, it's also called "Zombie Mutants" in Germany. Again, so far so good. But naturally, names and a DVD or Blu Ray sleeve doesn't make a good feature. And this is a perfect example. First of all, once the flick was over I thought, hell, where were those zombies? Secondly I thought, Jesus, I forgot to get scared. You can see it coming, bad as hell. Sadly not bad that it became good. It's watchable as a TV movie but to categorize it under horror, no way. The effects used are laughable. You can easily see that the infection on the skin is just add on the flesh. The mutants once they attack are just targets to be shot. Just look at it, once they are clearing the laboratory and the sugar plantation were all the experiments are being done you are just watching a game, shoot every mutant popping up. It's really boring because there's no suspense by doing that. Otherwise, some actors get shot but after 5 minutes they are walking around without any pain or limitations. And the shot wounds just look like a scratch. The best part was when Ironside is confronted with one of his friends trying to get him killed. But I must say, he's in real life getting old. I have met him twice at conventions and you could easily see him ageing. But the worst thing was when they showed one of the mutants transforming in a creature was done by CGI and one of the cheap ones. One explosion was also CGI, the flames were CGI, and it came up to me to state CGwhy? It wouldn't even fit into exploitation. No this was just a waste of time, I did it, no you don't do it. Go watch the French Mutant.