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Released by: Sony
Released on: 2/17/2009
Director: Sheldon Wilson
Cast: Gina Holden, Jana Pallaske, Greg Bryk, Lance Henriksen, Stephen Amell
Year: 2008
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The Movie:
Remember Screamers? That sci-fi horror film that came out in 1996 with Peter Weller in the lead role? Yeah, neither do a lot of other people, but here we are in 2009 with a straight to video sequel to that very same film in the form of Screamers: The Hunting, though Weller is nowhere to be seen this time around.
If you haven't seen the first film, it doesn't really matter. The opening sequence more or less tells us everything we need to know to follow along. The human population of a distant planet named Sirius 6B were laid to waste by these weird little killer robot things known as Screamers… or so everyone though. A rag tag group of survivors have managed to hang on.
Cut to a space ship… in the middle of… umm… space. Here we find a group of military types lead by Lieutenant Victoria Bronte (Gina Holden) who receive a distress signal that takes them to, you guessed it, Sirius 6B. They land on the planet, get into a scrap with the rag tag group of survivors, and then eventually realize that the Screamers, who have learned to somehow change into human form, are going to kill everyone at which point they all decide to work together. Lance Henriksen shows up for a few minutes, lots of people die, the end.
Borrowing from Starship Troopers and Alien, this film isn't in the least bit original (I don't care of it's based on a Philip K. Dick story) but it is a whole lot of gory, B-movie fun. The performances are about what you'd expect from a movie of this caliber in that they're all played straight but verge on overdoing it from time to time. As far as the production values go, well a lot of the film takes place underground and in the dark and you have to wonder if maybe that was done on purpose to cover up some low budget set design. Regardless, it works. The cinematography is competent enough, the sound mix is effective particularly when the Screamers attack, and the film moves along at a good pace.
The movie is also surprisingly bloody. From the opening scene in which a woman has her leg broken and her head torn off to the big, bloody finale in which a man has his face 'Screamer-fied' this is a pretty splashy picture that earns its R rating. Those expecting a whole lot of Lance will be disappointed, he's really only in the movie for about ten minutes or so, but fans of cheap, gory spaced based monster movies will probably have a good time with this one, a good beer and pizza movie.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The picture is presented in a pretty good-looking 1.78.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer. There are some mild compression artifacts present during a couple of the darker scenes, as well as some mild edge enhancement but none of it is overly severe. Colors look pretty bold and robust without coming across as overcooked, and the flesh tones in the film remain life like without turning too pink or too orange. It isn't a perfect transfer with the aforementioned authoring issues, but there isn't any print damage worth complaining about (a few specks more than I'd expected from a new film, but still not too bad) and the grain that is noticeable is only of the very fine variety. The movie looks good.
The English language Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound track does a great job of handling the action scenes for this film. It's a pretty aggressive mix that differentiates and places the action sound effects across the soundstage as required by the way the film plays out. Plenty of gunshots, bone cracking, sword swinging and cheesy background music swells up behind (not overtop) the dialogue, which lets the talkier bits stay clean and easy to follow. This DVD contains an optional English language closed captioning feature as well as subtitles available in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean and Thai. Optional Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound dubs are provided in Spanish, Portuguese and Thai.
Aside from a batch of trailers for other Sony DVD properties, there's Screamers: The Hunting Behind The Scenes (23:47) featurette. Here you'll find interviews with Henriksen, Amell, Bryk, Holden, supervising producer Gordon Yang, and a bunch of other cast and crew members. Topics covered include casting, special effects work, what it was like shooting on location and post-production tweaking. It's a fairly clip heavy piece and at times it feels a bit padded but there's some good information in here and some interesting on set and effects test footage.
The Final Word:
While light on extras, at least Screamers: The Hunting looks and sounds pretty good. As to the movie itself, it's good goofy, gory fun and fans of low budget sci-fi/horror films will dig this one.