My natural inclination with British made films is to want to give them the benefit of the doubt. Few enough films get made in this country and even fewer sf and fantasy films get made, get distributed and attract a reasonable amount of attention. So I really, really wanted to be able to say nice things about Mutant Chronicles – especially since they’ve managed to attract a cast with some reasonably recognisable names – including Ron Perlman and Thomas Jane.
Based on a board game, Mutant Chronicles is set in 2707 where constant war and the exploitation of natural resources have destroyed the Earth and where four corporations struggle over the crumbling wreckage. During a particularly fierce battle an ancient seal is broken and an alien technology escapes which can turn humans into mindless killers with giant claws and really bad skin conditions. Why an alien technology might want to do this is never explained, but frankly that’s the least of Mutant Chronicles’ problems. While those who can flee to the colonies on Mars, a small band led by a Brother Samuel (Perlman), who believes that a religious tome carries the key to defeating the alien technology, set off into the heart of the region controlled by the alien zombies on a suicide mission.
Effectively The Dirty Dozen with lobster-clawed zombies, the story’s premise might have been serviceable enough for an entertaining evening of mayhem, even if it The Mutant Chronicles was unlikely to win any prizes for originality. Unfortunately the premise is the only thing this film has going for it.
The thing that will strike most viewers first is the fact that the ambitious attempt to create a digital world for the action in the movie just doesn’t work. CGI has come a long way in recent years, but this bargain basement effort looks like it owes more to an optimistic teenager with a Commodore Amiga than Hollywood’s big-budget efforts. The fact that the positioning of the actors against the digital background appears random, that the size of things shifts in and out of scale and that none of the actors look for one moment as if they believe in the world they are supposed to be saving are major drawbacks for a film hoping to engage the audience.
To be fair to all those involved in creating the look of the film, it is obvious that a great deal of love and attention has gone into the design of the steampunkish world in which the story takes place. But the special effects simply aren’t up to delivering a realistic representation of the artists’ vision. Perhaps a more seasoned or more realistic director than Simon Hunter could have got away with things by narrowing the focus of his film but everyone seems to have believed that it would all look great after post-production. They were wrong and the result is that every dodgy effect is up on screen at a vast scale.
But worse than the graphical shortcomings is the cumbersome script by Philip Eisner, previously responsible for Paul WS Anderson’s dire Event Horizon, which fails on just about every level. It fails to create a single character that the audience can invest in or who embarks on anything that feels like a remotely realistic development arc. Every single character has been mercilessly stamped out from the draw marked stereotype (square-jawed hero, religious fanatic, proud Prussion, stoic Brit, mysterious Oriental) and Eisner’s attempts at handling the inter-relationships of a band of warriors on a hopeless mission are laughably mishandled. Indeed, wherever the plot pauses in an attempt to simulate humanlike emotion or character depth there looms a great black hole of stultifying dialogue and shallow witlessness.
Even the tough guy one-liners, which are presumably supposed to add a little humour to this unleavened disaster, fall hopelessly flat.
The plot makes no sense, with holes in it you could drive a whole planet through. The actors look as uninterested and bemused as the audience to the point, except when John Malkovich makes a fleeting (and suitably hammy) cameo when everyone seems to stop and ask what the hell is he doing in a piece of rubbish like this? The alien zombies are hopelessly banal. Not even the action sequences work as they should – with characters we don’t care about sacrificing themselves for a cause we don’t understand and the battles overcompensating for the absence of an emotional core with yet more special effects that don’t really work.
It might, I suppose, be possible to devise a drinking game based around taking a drink every time an actor looks embarrassed on screen during The Mutant Chronicles, but honestly that’s the only reason I can think of why anyone might even consider sitting through this profoundly disappointing film. The Mutant Chronicles is only for those who find the work of Uwe Boll and Paul WS Anderson too polished and thoughtful.