8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
very low budget sci fier., December 23, 2009
This is a low budget movie that takes place on a sugar plantation. Mad scientists turn people into sugar addicts , who then mutate. So with that premise you know that this is true sci fi shlock! It does have the excellent Michael Ironside in a supporting role and the rest of the cast are decent actors. The movie however will not find a place of enjoyment in non sci fi fans or for people who do not enjoy low budget efforts. This is the first blu ray that I have ever watched that had no chapters either! That is ultra cheap! The movies box makes this out to be a higher quality movie than it is with references to 'I am legend" and other movies. The mutants are mainly people with a few sores on them and there is only one mutant that looks similiar to the cover art. And it is in a cage. That's how low budget this movie is. I watch alot of low budget flicks, and try to find something in them that is good, I even scale them on a low budget sci fi/horror scale to keep things fair, obviously a five star low budget horror flick is about a three star to a great film like 'lawrence of arabia" which still isn't out on blu ray! This is a rather shlocky flick shot on shoestring budget and on that level it is what it is. If you don't like these type of flicks avoid this one. But if you like bad low budget horror and sci fi like me and know what to expect then you may enjoy this one.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Awww SUGAR!, August 7, 2010
Mutants is not about mutants, though you might be led to believe that's the subject from the title. Mutants is not about aliens from outer space, though you might think so from the cover art. Mutants is about sugar zombies.
Now I know what you're thinking: sugar zombies? Is that not the lamest form of zombie around? Zombies that are really, really sweet - or, if you prefer, sweet zombies...?
Perhaps I'm being unfair. The excellent opening credits show falling crystals - crystals, we realize later, that are actually sugar crystals - interspersed with a conversation between Colonel Gauge (Michael Ironside) and secret agent Santiago (Steven Bauer) on a static-y webcam. You know, the kind that has static instead of freezes or disconnects like real webcams.
Anyway, Santiago tells his story in a flashback about a mission gone awry. Braylon (Richard Zeringue) of the Just Rite Sugar Company has teamed with outlawed Russian scientist Sergei (Armando Leduc) to make their sugar product even more addictive than heroin. Their brilliant plan is to kidnap junkies and the homeless as test subjects. What could possibly go wrong?
No, not the police opening an investigation into all these missing people (over 40!). No, not the aforementioned Santiago blowing the whistle on the operation. No, what ruins Braylon's mad plan to rule the world is an accidental kidnapping of the brother of one of his own employees. Poor Ryan (Derrick Denicola) is the brother of Just Rite Sugar secretary Erin (Sharon Landry) and son of the security chief Griff (Louis Herthum). It's a bit like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, only far more stupid and with zombies.
A mole, codenamed Cinderella, leaks the information to Erin, who leaks it to Griff, who decides to break his son out of the Black Rock Sugar Mill where the experiments take place. Their timing is excellent - it just happens to be when Braylon is bringing some other unethical distributors to the mill to demonstrate the effectiveness of their super sugar. What Braylon doesn't realize is that after three months, said super sugar turns you into a zombie. Hilarity ensues.
Somewhere in the midst of this is a deadly rivalry between the hired security company that Griff works for and the black ops team that Gauge works for. When the two clash, sparks will fly...actually, not really. The conclusion ends with two fat guys wrestling. So perhaps that should be rephrased as "fat will jiggle!"
The zombies, who look like haunted house rejects, pop up like targets at a carnival. When they die, they just jump out of frame. There's one CGI scene of a thing rotting in a corner that could be the guy on the cover, but that's probably giving the marketers too much credit. There's just not enough zombies - or mutants, or aliens -- to really justify this movie.
And yet, Mutants has ambition. The end of the film has more horror in its one minute montage than the other 83 minutes of this mess. It's like a different movie was tacked on to as a conclusion. Marred by bad special effects, bad acting, and not enough zombies, it will take quite a few spoonfuls of sugar to help this bad movie go down.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
NO! THIS ISN'T 28 DAYS LATER MEETS I AM LEGEND, July 11, 2010
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.
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