Reviews

Just in case you could not grasp the subtle undertones of my review title above...

My recommendation in a nutshell: NO. I guess to justify the one star I left I could base it on Keith David and Brad Dourif doing their best even when the material to work with is utter crap. Both are the only ones in the movie who made my brain perk up when they were on screen. You may have heard talk about the show-stopping opening. I was about to point out that hardly qualifies as 'show-stopping' quality in my book, but it SHOULD have stopped the show. The credit sequence to follow was an eyesore. It all goes clumsily and rapidly downhill after there.

You want a longer explanation? Okay, then. First, I cannot believe I actually read a few fairly good reviews on horror sites. Possibly due to some of the gore I rattle (har) off below. Yes, the movie has a nasty, mean-spirited, creative dismemberment before the title credits. Actually, the entire movie is very mean-spirited, not just the gore. Here is some but not all gore included (I saw the unrated version): victim's arms being dislocated/Achilles tendons cut, then the face sort of scrubbed off slowly with 2 chains (yes, this all happened to the same poor guy, arguably the ugliest demise in the whole firm), hook through jaw, upper body crushed w/heavy object, giant hook through shoulder, heat split open by chain ...see now, I don't even think it is worth the use of my brain to recount them all. In at least one scene I got this specific creepy feeling I get while watching a horror film that usually causes me to classify it as 'torture-porn': getting an icky feeling during a drawn-out torture scene that someone involved in the making of the movie got off on it. Some creepy duct-tape and/or mutilation fetish, or something, bleh, I don't want to think about it any more. I'm pretty sure if I searched here I'd find that a frequent tag associated with CL is "Torture Porn", but that is NOT a recommendation …at least I hope to God it isn't!

Where oh where to begin with the bad? Here's some. 'Teenagers' in high school that appear to be portrayed by actors mid-20s at youngest, and some closer to pushing 30. Keith David not getting to be bad-ass enough. Characters (all of them) that the "writers" did not even TRY to give the flimsiest of personality traits or a back-story to, so you could not care less who lives or dies. A couple of the 'highschoolers' did their best, but you can only go so far with a boring, sloppily-written script. One 18-year old character's mother looks 30 years old, tops. Not enough reasons to avoid? Try adding in these! No real ending. They try to convey a message about technology and that those who give up their privacy in trade for the newest, most convenient, "cool" tech/apps don't deserve safety, but that message only would have been original or effective 10 years ago (and a LOT has happened between now and then). We get hit over the head with this message so much it gets insulting to most people's intelligence, and far before the movie is over. Motive for killing is very vague, and there's only so many ways you can kill a person directly involving a chain and keep it "new".

Also--and I hope people are through having to pay money in a theater to see CL and go for rental only- my DVD had no subtitles, not even CC for the hearing impaired (when I used the standard TV CC settings) .Bare bones for the special features. In fact, I don't even recall if there was a trailer. NO back-story on the killer, even though he has one distinctive (but unoriginal) feature, it isn't explained, and could have added a teeny bit of depth.

Don't get me wrong. I never set out NOT to like a movie, I don't rent them out of spite, life --and my funds-- are too short. I've seen more horror movies --just over the past couple years--than most people see in decades. I know what mindless, fun, entertaining horror movies look like; I grew up in the 80s, so trust me, I know mindless horror fun when I see it. This is not one of those movies. Want some movie that is a gory blast to watch, has some scares or at least very creepy moments, doesn't follow a complicated plot, and that you could keep up with plot-wise even if you had a few drinks in you? Chain Letter is NOT one of them. Try, oh, any of the Evil Dead series, the 80s re-make of The Blob, Planet Terror, 2001 Maniacs, Dead/Alive, Feast ...and those are just off the top of my head. No wonder Fangoria didn't bother to cover this train wreck to do a feature.

Finally, another BIG minus is the fact that this had a lot of potential. I had a little hope before I saw the movie, since the plot, and even some of the buzz, was along the lines of what could have been another Final Destination franchise. Now I sincerely hope a sequel does not happen, but I think they were trying (and WAY too hard) to be the next Saw or FD. Not even close.

Avoid! If you rent it just to see the gore, don't do it. You'll hate yourself after, take my word for it!

I can't compare the game to the movie that well, since I've only played the game once or twice in the arcade and didn't last very long before I got eaten. (Check the trivia section on the IMDB if you want more info on that, though beware of many spoilers) I don't know if the game has any more of a backstory than the DVD box did: a virus is accidentally unleashed at an underground biological research facility that turns all the employees, lab animals, and experiments into flesh-eating undead. A rescue team discovers too late they are stuck in there with them; they have 3 hours to get out without getting eaten or, worse, infected before the ‘Red Queen' master computer permanently shuts down all the exits.

On the negative side, it was a little longer than an action movie needs to be-- 10 minutes could have been trimmed, I caught myself wanting to hit forward and skip scenes in the first half hour of people wandering warily around deserted areas. I've never wanted to do that with a Romero movie. It does take a little too long to get going, but when the action kicks in, trust me, it doesn't let up, to the point where I felt kind of battered after the movie-- really unrelenting. I couldn't stand the industrial/techno soundtrack, but then I don't usually listen to bands with song titles like ‘Fistf*ck' and `My Plague (New Abuse Mix)'. I guess it was appropriate for the movie, I didn't exactly expect, say, Oingo Boingo (though that would have been kind of cool, now that I think of it) but it was grating after a while. Several shots were extremely derivative of Romero, but since I haven't watched the featurettes or commentaries, I'm not sure if the filmmakers intended them as a tribute/in-joke (like the newspaper headline blowing around a deserted street proclaiming THE DEAD WALK, always great to see in any movie) or just ripped them off with the plan to say they were ‘inspired by' the other movie if anyone pointed out the similarities.

The end seemed to be setting up for a sequel (according to the IMDB, one is planned but not even in pre-production), though at least not in an extremely cliched way, and it mainly irritated me because it was a cliffhanger. There's also several CGI shots where the monster looks about as realistic as the one in the actual game; I did not for a moment forget I was watching CGI, and it was VERY easy to tell where the animatronics ended and the CGI began in several key scenes.

OK, enough of what didn't work. On the plus side, Milla Jovovich has proven herself to be one of the few genuinely talented model-turned-actresses, and gives a great performance. I was kind of disappointed in Michelle Rodriguez's acting, mainly because she was so good in Girlfight, but she was acceptable and at least can really look like a badass. There's quite a few fun--and sick--shots. There were plot twists that I actually didn't see coming--sorry to say, I could see most of the jumps walking up 5th Avenue-- and the plot was a lot more brutal and downbeat than I expected (for a movie based on a video game, and for a modern zombie movie, anyway)--good for them. They did definitely outright steal some ideas from Dawn of the Dead (and, as everybody has already probably pointed out, Cube) but at least had some originality by putting a slightly new twist on them. There was a much higher body count than I thought (not counting all the zombie employees, of course, I mean among the heroes), most of which was pretty ballsy. Characters did not die in the order I expected them to. Things got pretty cold-blooded (so to speak).

I'd recommend it for a rental, if you want a mindless, scary action movie with some real suspense. You could do a lot worse (like rent the director's Mortal Kombat, for instance) Not bad for a mainstream studio movie based on a game.

I rented this movie because it was recommended to me, and I love

the Hughes Brothers. Wanted to see a little action that might take

my mind off the news lately (boy, did I get a wrong number there)

and be at least mildly entertained.

SPOILERS AHEAD, WARNING!

Yeah, they definitely mis-marketed this-- it is not a 'heist' movie, or

a simple 'action' movie. There is a heist, but only the last half hour

of the film (and it's a 2 hour film) is spent on it. It starts out in the

late 60's-- I was thinking please God, let this not just be a short

prologue and have the whole movie take place in the 60's and

70's, and I got my wish. Tate's character hangs out with his

friends, wants to have fun and get laid, and go to Vietnam and

'make a difference' since a local poolhall owner and his father are

both vets, he looks up to them. The first 1/3 or so takes place in

1969, shows what a dangerous but fun lifestyle (not to mention,

great music and great wardrobe) Tate's character is living it up

with his friends (including Chris Tucker, who has more depth than

I thought). By the first 15 minutes, I was glad the movie was

mis-marketed, because I was enjoying the kind of coming-of-age

story and characters. The next 45 minutes or so--there's a great

transition talked about in the other reviews, switching from Tate's

character (sorry, blanked on the name!) sprinting over fences and

backyards after he almost gets caught with his pants down, to him

literally dodging bullets in Nam-- are spent showing his tour of

duty in Vietnam.

Things get ugly there, I mean really gory and disturbing- BIG switch

in tone. I feel like all the most gruesome, disturbing moments and

scenes from hours of Nam movies were all crammed together,

and the 45 minutes or so in this movie still tops them. Do not eat

while watching this. All the violence and nightmarish scenes are

not just for the sake of being violent, they are essential to the plot,

and I'm not complaining (though something tells me I'm in for

some really bad dreams tonight) but I was totally unprepared. I'm

surprised Fangoria didn't do a story about all the splatter effects.

We're talking heads chopped off with machetes, said heads

carried around by insane soldier as a 'souvenier' (As he was

shoving the head into his pack with difficulty, I was thinking that if

he was going to start taking souveniers, he should pick a much

smaller body part if he wants to get a collection of souveniers

going) keeping it around until said head is rotting with maggots,

people being blown into smithereens, body parts all over the

place, characters with their guts strewn everywhere but still alive,

people's genital chopped off and shoved in their mouths, and this

is all on-camera and in daylight-- really, really graphic.

Tate manages to get through this without developing a serious

drug habit or going insane. He comes home after a 4 year tour of

duty, so the last third takes place in 1973. He goes back to the old

neightborhood to find some unpleasant surprises-- not the least of

which is money problems, so that's when he and his surviving

buddies- who are not in the greatest mental or financial shape

themselves-- start to work out the heist.

The movie got the message through without hitting me over the

head-- black men fighting a white man's war, coming home and

finding things much worse, little respect. The character

understandably ends up joining a revoluntionary group. I guess I

was dissapointed when he decided his only option was to pull a

very ill-advised heist (hmmmm, at least one of the guys in on it has

a serious drug habit, a few of them don't get along, another has

totally lost it and just wants to blow up things and people for the joy

of it, could this possibly have a happy ending?) but considering all

the atrocious, hideous experiences in Nam (he has very graphic

and disturbing nightmares and flashbacks) then coming back to

all the depressing ***t that he does, I guess I don't blame him for

having bad judgement or doing something desperate.

Not a cheerful movie. But grim as it was, I was very impressed,

especially considering how young the directors were-- they pay

homage to other directors but don't rip them off. It is too bad the

studios didn't market it to be more of the themes of war, struggle,

and survival the movie really focuses on. I'm pretty sure that the

Hughs wanted to market it that way, but the racist studio heads

took it out of their hands and figured that all audiences expected to

see a black cast doing was shooting and robbing people, so they

geared it towards that. Too bad, the movie deserves a better

campaign and a wider audience.

No no no no.

I foolishly rented this, thinking that...uh…what was I thinking? I've seen Man Behind the Sun and while I can't exactly say I 'enjoyed' it, it was shocking, powerful, and deeply disturbing. I watched it once around 5 years ago, re-watched it recently to review it. For some reason I thought I'd read the sequel was much more disturbing. So, what do I do? Like a fool, out of morbid curiosity I have to check it out.

If you've seen the original, just quit while you're ahead. I cannot stress this strongly enough. I mean it. RUN! If you haven't seen any of the 'series' and feel the need to see any of them (whether or not that is a good idea for you to do is a whole different discussion) just see the first one. In the original, the plot centers on camp 731, where horribly inventive and vicious medical experiments are performed on prisoners under the guise of 'scientific research' for warfare. That one actually has a plot, and some characters you care about. The reason I'm going on at length about the first movie is that 90% of this movie "Laboratory of the Devil" is simply the first movie, re-staged, only done very badly.

The ‘plot' goes something like this: a guy, who I think was supposed to have been at camp 731, goes to a house for a meeting, post WW2. A bunch of Japanese men sit stiffly around the table. Through This review contains some slight spoilers, but you'll be doing yourself a big favor if you read it before you decide to waste your money on this terrible sequel (if you can call it that). some very badly written dialogue (though to be fair, the movie is dubbed, so maybe the translation lost something) we find out that the main evil guy from the first movie wants to restart the medical experiments. Why he would want to is not that clear, other than out of sheer meanness. After more boring dialogue that I was tempted to fast forward through, the guy that came in says something to the effect of 'have you no honor? Don't you remember what happened before?' No, for some reason they don't, even though they were all there the first time. "Well let me tell you about it..."

We go into flashback mode and I optimistically figure it'll last maybe 5 minutes, summing up the first movie. Uh-oh, it seems to be going on longer. And the plot seems kind of familiar. OK, well, maybe they'll wrap it up in the next 15 minutes. After I realized the movie was half over, I resigned myself to the fact that the whole movie was going to be a re-hash of the first.

Now that's bad and lazy enough, but not only do they just blunderingly re-stage the first movie, they manage to completely f-*$% it up in every way possible. To try to add pathos, there's a lame romantic subplot. The experiments that are restaged are the most boring ones, and they only include one from the first movie that was a real shocker, but since most of us have SEEN the first movie, it's not shocking. The first movie was well paced, but in this case, it seems like the screenwriters just wrote down all the scenes from the original on index cards, put them all in a hat, and picked them out at random and filmed them in no particular order, making sure to leave out the most powerful ones and substituting incredibly stupid ones in their place. There's an autopsy at the beginning on a corpse that goes on way too long and is obviously intercut with actual autopsy footage. Not only is this lazy, but if I wanted to sit there watching endless scenes of autopsies, I would have, well, rented a video that consisted of actual autopsies

instead (yes, you can rent those now). I didn't think a movie could be disgusting and boring at the same time, but LOTD manages.

But wait! There's more. They also figured that maybe the first movie wasn't humorous enough (yeah, you really need humor in a movie about POW torture), so they stuck in some really, really unfunny "comic relief". Here is an exact quote, to give you an idea. Two guards are walking out of the lab after a frostbite experiment. Guy #1:"...they found out that women have a greater resistance to cold than men." Guy #2-"Yeah well, I guess that explains why my wife is frigid!" (rim shot) They roar with laughter. HAHAHAHAHA!

Stop, you guys, I'm laughing so hard it hurts! Whooo-hooo! I'm still holding my sides! (I was kidding about the rim shot, but there might as well have been one, it would have been an improvement).

There is, however, some unintentional humor (though NOT worth watching the movie for-if the forthcoming description of the unintentional humor amuses you at all , just LEAVE IT AT THAT. Count your blessings. I'm making it sound much more entertaining than sitting through the movie is) For instance, the English dubbing is so laughably bad it sounds like a parody of bad dubbing in an Asian film (Your Kung Fu is lousy!) It sounds like they have maybe 2, 3 guys tops doing all the characters. In one scene a bunch of scientists or commanders or whatever they're supposed to be are wearing surgical masks. One sounds completely normal while the other guy sounds like he's yelling into his cupped hands or through a saltine box. Also, the characters, both heroes and bad guys, are amazingly stupid. At one point, the hero (I think he was the hero, anyway) helps with one 'test' that consists of prisoners being lined up and shot. Why they need to research what happens when they do this, I don't know, but anyway, the hero reluctantly fires at the commander's order, naturally killing them, then looks shocked and horrified at the results. What did he think was going to happen? Oh, and this is after he watches the same thing being done 3 times in a row before this with no expression at all on his face.

In another scene, the bad guys inject a slice of watermelon with what I assume is some sort of toxic substance. Then we see a guy being dragged, struggling, into frame by the other bad guys,: "No! No! You can't make me eat it!" "You WILL eat this!!" They force feed it to him, though it looks more like they just rubbed it into his teeth, he foams at the mouth a little, and dies. Was that supposed to scare me or disturb me? Why the hell didn't they just give it to him to eat and not tell him what it was? In the first movie, during several scenes prisoners are tricked into the experiments, which is much more believable and has much more powerful and disturbing results. In the first movie, it had the effect of making you hate the villains even more. Here, you just think they're badly organized morons. Speaking of that, there's another scene where the prisoners are all in one room with huge numbers on their uniforms so large that the digits would be visible from another planet, and when they need them for experiments, a guard just walks in with a clipboard and calls out their numbers, and they call out "here!" like it's roll call in a class or something. For some reason that struck me as funny. Maybe I was just so bored I was trying to entertain myself by finding anything I could to jeer at.

Not enough reasons to skip this? OK, here's more. The makeup effects (other than the real autopsy footage) are really, really cheesy and unrealistic. Several workers are beaten and slapped for disobeying. I've seen more realistic punches thrown in Dolemite movies-seriously, we're talking the hand visibly not coming within six inches of the person's face and the person reacting like they were hit. Terrible continuity, too-in one scene, a guy bites into a small corner of a guards earlobe while fighting, then we cut (they always cut away instead of going to the trouble of showing any sort of effect) to a shot of the guy with a huge chunk of flesh in his mouth. Oh, and every once in a while, they stick in some stock war footage that is so grainy you can barely tell what's going on (I *think* that was a shot of something being blown up there...)

The characters look so much alike (I'm not saying this in a racist way -in the first movie, I had no problem, but here the screenwriting is so sloppy I didn't know who was who. OK, is that guy upset because they just killed....uh...his father?his brother? Was that his roommate? Who knows? The only positive things about this wretched excuse for an exploitation movie are that it leaves out the suspiciously realistic, unnecessary scenes of animal cruelty included in the first one, and that it has the guts to have a downbeat ending (though again, it's just a really inept rip-off of the first movie). SPOILER AHEAD:

any movie that ends with the hero suddenly being decapitated should get a tiny iota of credit, I guess. The first movie was so disturbing it made me lose sleep, this one just put me to sleep. I repeat, do NOT waste your time with this (especially if you've seen the first one). If you want to see something really shocking, upsetting, and disturbing, just rent the original. If you want to be bored, mad at yourself for wasting your money, and have your intelligence insulted, then rent this one. I heard that the third one is the worst in the series-boy, I don't even want to think about that.

Note: This review contains minor spoilers, though there isn't much to spoil and you'll be doing yourself a huge favor if you read the review instead of seeing the movie.

I don't think I've ever rushed this fast to give something a bad review in the IMDB.

I keep trying to go back to what I could have been thinking when I selected this at the rental store. I heard a lot of bad things about it, enough to keep me from seeing it in the theater. Maybe what stuck in my mind were a few people saying it had one or two really good FX scenes, and also Kevin Bacon's diary of the filming, which made it sound so grueling and unpleasant that I felt some pity for him and thought I should give it a chance. Big mistake. Big, BIG mistake.

Most of the other reviews say it all...but I need to write down how bad this movie is and hopefully purge it from my system. You know, I don't ask for the impossible when I sit down to watch a movie. All I really want from a movie, at minimum, is to be entertained or to escape for 90 minutes or so. The movie started out OK but after the gorilla scene, and the two other invisible transformation scenes, it really went downhill. And got worse.

Oh yeah, in case you haven't seen the trailer, or read a review, the plot is: a group of scientists is working on an invisibility formula, for the government. The leader of the project is smart, but an arrogant jerk. He meddles with mother nature (another no-no in a scary movie) and deliberately deceives people who trust him (again, another mistake) so the formula can be tested on him as the first human. You'll never guess what happens then: things go horribly wrong! People turn to murder! Disaster strikes! You waste 2 hours of your time and a rental fee because you should have just watched the trailer, which gave the whole plot away anyway!

I had low expectations for this movie-all I wanted was for something to surprise me, or there to be a special effect or shock that made me watch the scene/moment again a couple times. Or at least want to. For instance, "Deep Blue Sea" was stupid and mainly lame, but at least had that one big surprise (you know the one I mean-I won't give it away like someone did to me before I saw it). Nope.

I didn't find any of the characters likeable. Sorry, but I don't have too much respect for any character in a horror/thriller movie that does any of the following: 1. walks backward when they know they are in danger 2. turns their back on someone dangerous that they've conked/injured and strolls away without checking to see if they've really been incapacitated 3. immediately separates when they first realize they are in an isolated area being stalked by someone or 4. says something to the effect of "well, I'm glad *that's* over" when things obviously aren't-and if you've seen even one other scary movie, everyone knows this is always a precursor to the villain/monster immediately swooping down on them again or lunging into frame. This movie has ALL of the above-which I could overlook if the movie was at least slightly entertaining (Bruce Campbell in any of the Evil Dead movies usually does all of the above, but makes it fun to watch, to name just one example).

Also-and I see by the other reviews that I'm not alone here- I get really insulted when, especially on top of all the other crap, a villain conveniently becomes indestructible in the last half hour or so with no explanation. About every possible debilitating injury happens to him and it doesn't seem to slow him down. All that was missing was him being shot and the bullets bouncing off him.

I expected there to be one interesting or memorable concept, especially since (I thought at the time) the movie had such meticulous attention to detail and seemed to take a very high-tech, scientific approach to the story. The trailers and background info on the making of this film, plus how long it took in post-production, gave me that impression. The reviews gave it more credit than it had. I was at first slightly interested in the fact that an invisible character couldn't close their eyes, because they had transparent eyelids. I never thought of that! Hmmm, maybe they came up with some other cool twists. That's about as interesting as it gets, and the only new idea they came up with. (then, that got shot all to hell, because about 1 minute later it occurred to me that the person could wear a sleep mask, or go in a completely blacked-out room). A person graphically stripped of all their layers, reminding you (if you're old enough) of the 'visible man' kit you had as a kid? Been done before (though not as well technically as in this movie). A gorilla doing the same thing? OK, that hasn't been done before, at least not that I know of, but that's maybe 30 seconds that are slightly interesting. Let's face it, you thinking "hey, good CGI" occasionally is not enough to build a good movie on- in fact, it's pretty sad.

I would run out of room if I went into even half of the continuity errors. Just look at the goofs page-I think I've seen one other movie in the IMDB that had a goofs page that long. Now, I'm the type of person who people have to point out continuity errors to before I notice them. Here I noticed ones I didn't even LOOK for. What happened? Did they run out of time? Money? The studio rushed them? What's really depressing is someone probably noticed, but they either were too lacy to care or figured the audience would be so impressed with the CGI that their IQs would drop about 50 points and they'd miss it. Not to beat a dead horse, but if the movie had a character that was interesting, or if any scenes surprised me, or entertained me, I could overlook it being stupid and built around some 'ground-breaking' CGI. Yes, I know what a 'popcorn movie/turn off your brain movie' is, where you just sit back and enjoy the mindless ride. Starship Troopers, Total Recall, Scary Movie- *those* are popcorn movies. It's also not a camp/so bad it's good type movie. Showgirls, Mommy Dearest, Glen or Glenda- those are ones you can sit and make fun of with your friends. No, instead The Hollow Man is just a waste of everyone's time and money, and that's putting it in way more polite terms than I want to.

I would only recommend this if you are a CGI/FX junkie,if you thought "Armageddon" and "Patch Adams" were deep, insightful masterpieces and and you didn't understand why everyone said anything bad about them, or if you really have the hots for Kevin Bacon (though skip the 'becoming invisible' scene, among others, if you don't want to get completely turned off). Interesting premise that goes absolutely nowhere. You have been warned!!