Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus (2010)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: The Asylum

RUNTIME: 90 mins

FORMAT: DVD

PLOT: After surviving the titan battle at the end of the first movie, the Megalodon is back and wrecking havoc in the ocean once again, but soon finds itself locked in battle with a new gargantuan foe.

REVIEW: Right off the bat, Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus starts on a slightly disappointing note. The end of the first movie set the stage for a sequel pretty well, but instead this movie decided to ignore that and go it's own route. Due to that, it lacks any returning characters from the first which means Lorenzo Lamas and Debbie Gibson, two of the better aspects of the first movie, are nowhere to be found and no explanation given as to their absence, which is weird considering their heavy involvement in the Mega Shark situation of the first movie. You'd think they would have been called back to action again here when the creature reappears.

In their place however is Jaleel White of Family Matters fame (Steve Urkel) and he plays a navy soldier on a U.S. battleship, having supposedly participated (off-screen) in the events of the first movie. He's some kind of shark expert and holds the conspiracy theory that the Megalodon is still alive and roaming the sea due to no carcass ever being recovered. When the beast proves him right by attacking the vessel he's currently serving on, his military girlfriend is killed and that makes everything personal for him from that point on. Much like Debbie Gibson in the first movie, he does as good as he can with what he's given to work with and comes out in top form, especially during a surprisingly emotional scene towards the end that he handled with perfection. Actually, most of the new main cast are all bright spots here, sticking out far above the main cast of the first movie. Joining Urkel, we get a John Roxton-style great white jungle hunter that's hired by a mining company to hunt down the newly-awakened Crocosaurus and this actor that plays that role, Gary Stretch, just completely steals every single scene he's in (which is almost all of them). Without a doubt, he's not only the best actor in the movie, but the most entertaining character to watch as well, though you have to wonder if the actor was drunk while filming some of these scenes because once in while he's hard to understand due to very slurred speech, and not just in the scenes where it shows him to be drinking. We also have a hard-as-nails female Government agent that links the two plots together as she hires both Gary Stretch and Urkel (each one an expert on one of the animals) to work together with herself for the U.S. Government in order to stop both monsters. What makes this group of ragtag experts even better and more realistic is that unlike the first movie, these guys aren’t friends and they don't always get along or see eye-to-eye which creates some very good tension and some entertaining scenes to pass away the time between animal attacks. Finally, we have Robert Ricardo from Star Trek Voyager playing the same basic role that Lorenzo Lamas did in the first movie; that is to say all he had to do was stand around in a control room and threateningly bark orders at everyone while every once in a while firing off a sarcastic wise crack. Not a whole lot to do, but he handled the role very well and dare I say, far better then Lorenzo Lamas did in the first movie. Right from the beginning, you can get behind these new characters and if we must leave out the characters from the first movie, these are damn good replacements. Actually, sorry to say, but I ended up liking all of these characters far more then the ones in the first movie.

But where this movie did better with the characters, it failed with the title creatures. The special effects for the Megalodon are of a far lesser quality then they were in the first movie, and the Crocosaurus just looks plain bad and kind of unfinished, coming across as if they ran out of time while creating it. Granted, there was one or two scenes were it did look pretty good, but they don't stand out in the memory much since every other scene of the animal looks really bad. Where we got an explanation in the first movie to the creatures being alive, however loose and unrealistic, no such explanation is given here for the gigantic prehistoric crocodile; the only explanation we get is that it was in an eon's-long slumber deep under the ground in the Congo jungle, when an illegal diamond mining operation accidentally wakes it up, with no explanation as to why it was asleep for so long nor how it could still be alive after being asleep for so long.

After my initial disappointment at seeing how crappy the effects were in this entry, and the fact that the introduction scenes of each creature were pretty lame, I pretty much lost all faith in future action scenes involving these creatures and was quite worried about my enjoyment in the movie. So it was then quite surprising to me that all the action scenes after the first 10 minutes were actually really well done and exciting. We don't get anything quite as memorable as some of the iconic cheese-fest scenes in the first movie, but we do get some very fun stuff all the same that works out to be bigger and better then most of the ones in the first movie. Some of the highlights would include an attack on the famous theme park Sea World by the Crocosaurus as it rampages through Orlando, Florida, while the Mega Shark deals with an attack from a submarine in a very humorous and entertaining way that I won't spoil here, as well as a fight to the death involving both animals while an underwater volcano spectacularly goes off around them. There were even a few action sequences, more-so towards the end, that almost seemed like they were inspired by some Michael Bay movies which was interesting to see.

Accompanying the awesome, more-longer, action scenes in this sequel is also an enjoyable fast-paced musical score that helps raise the excitement and urgency and was something I'm only realizing now that the first movie was lacking. Sure, that movie may have had generic action music, but it was boring and wasn't really noticeable. In this movie it's not only noticeable, but really adds to the action scenes, helping to elevate them above the action scenes of the first flick.

The script for this entry also seemed to be more competently-written, giving the characters actual real dialog to work with and creating a realistic and intelligent way of bringing the two creatures together for the promised water-based duel (which we actually get a few separate matches of this time). You see, after Gary Stretch manages to tranquilize the Crocosaurus in the jungle, he tries to transport her and her newly-laid eggs to the States, but while en-route over the ocean, the Mega Shark attacks the boat, only to have the Crocosaurus wake up and break free in order to fight the Mega Shark to protect her eggs. Things just proceed to get more and more out of control from there. While it may not be the best plot point ever, it's certainly better then the bullshit explanation we got in the first movie of 'They were programmed on a genetic level to hate each other and always fight when near one another'. Even the build-up to the climatic showdown in the back half of the movie was handled so much better then it was in the first movie. Not only was the main fight longer and more intense then the one in the first, but there were some nice little twists and surprises sprinkled throughout that I'm not going to spoil here that upped the ante, as well as being just an all around more action-packed fight.

After all is said and done, despite a few short comings with the special effects, this can be put down in the books as one of the rare cases of a sequel being better then the first, and it's now among my list of all-time personal favorite Asylum flicks. I find it surprising that the first got a nice BluRay treatment while this one was regulated to DVD-Only. Likewise, it also blows my mind that this one's not as well known as the original, despite clearly being much better, and many who saw the original didn't even know this one existed. Then again, I'm still shocked at how many people rent or buy a movie like this and then get upset that they're not watching something they can compare to Gone with the Wind. Like really...what were you seriously expecting with a title like Mega this vs Giant Whatever?

I'm really hoping for a third movie, and if that ever comes to light, I'd like to see these characters return – or possibly even the characters from the first movie team up with the characters from this movie. There's a short hidden teaser scene if you sit through all of the end credits that does set up quite well for a third movie, although it is basically a carbon copy of a line at the end of the first movie so who knows if the Godzilla-inspired nod will actually have anything to do with the next entry. However, the original idea for this one was going to be Mega Shark vs Giganotosaurus with a poster even done up showing the Megalodon fighting a giant Godzilla/Tyrannosaurus creature, so I'd say it's a pretty safe bet that they're instead going to use that idea for the third movie and hopefully the line of dialog during that hidden teaser scene really was setting that up instead of just being a throw-away line like the similar one in the first movie.

Here's to a Mega Shark 3.

8/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

UPDATE: You can now hear me discuss this movie as a guest host on the Saturday B-Movie Reel podcast.

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Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus (2009)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: The Asylum

RUNTIME: 89 mins

FORMAT: BluRay

PLOT: When two prehistoric beasts – an ancient Megalodon shark and a giant Octopus are released from having been frozen in a glacier for eons, they continue their never-ending battle throughout the world's oceans, with the U.S. Military hot on their heels and trying to put a stop to them.

REVIEW: As far as I'm concerned, when I popped Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus into my BluRay player to watch and review, I was just looking for a quick cheesy and fun B-movie to help pass a couple hours of my time and unwind after coming home from a super-busy day at work (which is all I really expect from any Asylum-made movie), and while I did end up getting that, overall this one just fell a tad short of the hype that the title and advertising promised.

Right off the bat, there are a lot, and I mean a lot, of overly-annoying and pointless flashcuts that make no sense as they happen in the middle of a scene for absolutely no discernible reason, instead of as a scene transition like they're supposed to be used for. In the span of the first 10 minutes I say we get a good 20-odd of those things, and they never do let up during the rest of the movie. And speaking of the first bit of the movie, we get about 5 minutes of nothing but sweeping landscape shots. Sure, the arctic glacier landscapes and the underwater ocean shots themselves all look really beautiful (especially in HD on BluRay), but there is no need for 5 minutes worth of showing these shots and just these shots. It's not a good sign when the movie starts off at such a slow rate. It made it quite tedious to sit through, even for me. There were a couple moments I found myself actually wanting to fast-forward a bit just to get through the first 5 minutes or so. And it got really annoying when they decided to combine those overly-long sweeping scenic shots with the pointlessly annoying flashcuts - again, for no reason whatsoever other then to try to be stylish when in actuality it just came off as annoying and hard to sit through.

With this being an Asylum movie, you can probably already assume, and you would be correct in assuming, that the actual script itself may not exactly be the best thing since sliced bread and the dialog can get quite atrocious at times, but neither of those things are really all that unexpected and anyone who did expect otherwise were clearly fooling themselves. Personally for me, the weirder the script and the worse the dialog, the better. I find it's part of the charm and is what makes these movies so much fun to watch while having a beer or two. Even the worst Asylum movies have that stuff going for them to make them entertaining, at least on some level.

Much like with another of their movies, Mega Piranha (which stared 80's pop sensation Tiffany), this movie also stars a washed-up 80's pop sensation by the name of Debbie Gibson who, IMO anyway, has aged far better and more gracefully then Tiffany has. Gibson could easily still pull off being in her late 20's and surprisingly, also unlike Tiffany, Gibson appears to be a decent actress. She may not win any Oscars, but as far as low budget Direct-to-Video movies go, she's excellent and never groan-worthy. Her actual role in the movie is that of a sealife expert that has teamed up with some colleagues to track the rampaging creatures down and figure out a way to stop them, and it's only a matter of time until they team up with the military, led by SyFy Channel alum Lorenzo Lamas (of such cinematic beauties as Raptor Island and 30,000 Leagues Under the Sea). He doesn't do anything spectacular here, but he's far from bad. He plays pretty much the exact same hardened military man that he plays in all of his movies, so by this stage of the game he can do the role in his sleep without much effort, especially in a movie like this where he doesn't really have a whole lot to do but stand around and threateningly bark orders at everyone. Other then those two, none of the other actors are really all that good at delivering the horrible dialog they're given, and the only other character of note is the Japanese scientist guy, and only because he's just so bad; easily the worst actor out of the entire group - it was literally painful to hear him talk. The other actors aren’t really worth mentioning and are pretty forgettable once the movie is over and all is said and done. The minor characters that are only in one or two scenes are also some of the worst I have ever seen in any movie, period. One only needs to watch the opening scene of the movie and bear witness to whoever's brother or friend they owed a favor to and gave them the helicopter pilot role, to understand. And for some reason, Asylum decided to throw in an out-of-nowhere sex scene between Debbie Gibson's character and the geeky Japanese scientist about half way through the movie, despite there not being even a hint of a romance between the two, and had no build-up, and then just completely drop the romance angle from the movie all together again after that, until the final scene where they throw in one throw-away line about being together.

But the part of the movie I really want to talk about, and the part that I got the most enjoyment out of, is not the boring cardboard human characters with bad acting and atrocious dialog, but instead the awesome title goliaths of the seas, the true stars of the movie - the Mega Shark and the Giant Octopus. Asylum's level of standards when it comes to their effects work can be a mixed bag - some movies have piss-poor special effects while others have excellent special effects. This movie leaves no stone unturned as they decided to incorporate both ends of that spectrum; The actual creatures themselves - the Megalodon shark and the Giant Octopus - looked great; some of the best effects work I've seen come out of this company yet. But then there are individual shots where the quality is noticeably lesser. For example, whenever we see the full Octopus – looks great, but whenever we see just the tentacles coming out of the water – looks horrible. Whenever we see the shark swimming around and attacking things on the surface of the water or under the water – looks great, but when it's leaping out of the water to attack things in the air – looks horrible. The difference in quality is most notable when both animals are on-screen at once, as it seems the quality in their effects work drop substantially, which is a shame since the movie is a 'Vs' movie after all so those scenes should be the most well-produced. Instead, the best looking scenes are the ones with the animals separate from each other.

Differing quality of effect shots aside, the actual action scenes involving one or the other of the creatures are mostly pretty fun. There are two or three of them that consist of a shot of the animal heading towards the camera, then a shot of the reactions of people on board whatever vessel is in the scene, and that's it. But luckily there's only a couple scenes like that and the rest actually do manage to show stuff happening. Yeah, ok, they may tread being annoyingly short with just about every single one clocking in at under 60 seconds, but what we do get to see are some pretty amazingly fun and cheesy stuff that just makes you fall in love with it so much that you don't even notice that it all happened in the amount of time it takes you to sneeze. Examples include, but are not limited to, the Mega Shark leaping so far out of the water that it takes down a passenger plane flying high in the sky overhead, or the Giant Octopus taking out a fleet of submarines in a split second as it crushes each one in a different tentacle at the same time, or the Shark taking out the Golden Gate Bridge while the Octopus takes down a huge ocean oil rig platform. Oh, and of course the fight scenes between the two colossal beasts as the movie hits it's exciting cheese-fueled adrenaline-pumped climax. There is plenty to love in this movie when it comes to the action scenes and IMO, the short runtime on them only means that we can get even more of them squeezed into the movie.

In the end, despite probably being their most well-known movie, it's definitely not Asylum's best movie and holds quite a few faults which prevents it from being as insanely enjoyable as it was advertised to be. However, it's still an all around fun movie and a great way to pass a rainy weekend night while having a beer or two with some friends.

6/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Manticore (2005)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: UFO International

RUNTIME: 88 mins

FORMAT: TV

PLOT: A squad of American soldiers in Iraq are sent on a rescue mission when a news reporter and her cameraman go missing, however during their mission they come across an ancient mythological beast that has to be stopped at all costs.

REVIEW: Over the last couple weeks, I've watched quite a large number of SyFy Channel's original movies. I'm not doing reviews of all of them because quite frankly, I just don't have the time. But I did want to pick at least a couple to do so I had something to update my blog with, so here's my review of the SyFy Original Movie titled Manticore.

To be honest, I wasn't really digging this movie too much right off the bat. When I watch a monster movie of any kind, I hate having a human villain thrown into the mix. It takes away some of the impact of the monster, and when I discovered there was to be human villains in this, I instantly got a frown. Luckily, I soon forgot about that and found myself really enjoying the movie.

A large reason for that enjoyment is due to some of the characters. We have 3 somewhat well-known names in this; we got the guy that played Chakotay from Star Trek Voyager as the commander of the group of marines that this movie focuses on, the girl from The Blair Witch Project showing definitively that she is indeed alive and well as one of the soldiers in the group, and Jeff Fahey (Lepidus from Lost) as the person in the military chain of command above even Chakotay's character. Now, I didn't really much care for the Commander role as played by Chakotay. He was pretty bland and didn't really inject any personality into the role. They could have cut him out from the movie mid-way through and I probably wouldn't have even noticed. A cardboard cut-out would have had more screen presence then he did in this movie. Now Heather from Blair Witch as the trust-worthy tomboy female soldier of the group – that's where the acting in this movie truly shines. She played the role perfectly and shows that her acting has really improved greatly since SyFy's epic 20-hour-long alien abduction mini-series Taken, where I didn't much care for her character or acting. In this movie though, she does excellent (I myself know people almost exactly like her character) and she really makes you care for her without having to give us any sort of lame cheesy backstory that these movies tend to get into the habit of giving. Other then her, we also got the always-fun Jeff Fahey, and while he didn't really have much to do other then stand around in the control room, looking over the shoulders of computer techs and barking orders into a phone, he did what he could with what he had and did it most excellently. No contest: he is by far the best actor in the movie and steals the show whenever he is on screen, as rare and short as those scenes are. I wish he could have been in it more, and had more to do, but oh well. After him, we also have the abrasive 'No such thing as No' reporter that has a knack for getting into trouble. The character herself was pretty interesting and I liked where they ultimately went with her, but I felt the actress gave a pretty 'Take it or Leave it' performance. There were times she's was great, but then there were times she was eye-rollingly bad. Whenever she had to act scared or the least bit human - bad. Whenever she had to act like the strong 'Won't Take No For an Answer' bitch, she was excellent. All the other characters in the movie were mostly the typical SyFy Channel soldier cannon fodder characters and they were pretty forgettable. They all have the exact same personalities as one-another and with their hulking helmets and military desert warfare uniforms on, they pretty much looked exactly the same for most of the movie as well, so I was never quite sure as to which ones just died and which were still alive, but it didn't really matter too much come the end anyway as all of those characters were only in the movie to create a decent body count.

Another aspect of the movie that I was able to get behind pretty quickly is the landscape. Normally SyFy movies take place in either a city/town or a woodland area, and while that's all fine and good, it was really nice to get a different kind of landscape for once. It added a different feel to the movie, and it was much appreciated. With that said however, they did drop the ball a bit with it. Part way through they make this big deal about an approaching massive sandstorm, which would have been really neat to see utilized, considering you can't have that in either of SyFy's other two main landscapes...but nothing ever comes from it. We either never get it, or we do but it's so mild that I missed it. Certainly not the big bad terrible sandstorm of doom that it was made out to be. That alone would have been a nice bit of added atmosphere, but it seems like the writers forgot all about it shortly after mentioning it.

Characters and terrain types are all well and good, but I know the real thing everyone is wondering about is what most SyFy movies have – the monster, with the one in this movie being some kind of giant flying wolf thing with a scorpion stinger tail that can shoot thick needles; the title creature called The Manticore. As far as special effects go, they're both good and bad. The first 60 minutes of the movie, we only get quick flashes and quick cuts of the monster, and those look excellent, and surprisingly, adds some genuine suspense to the movie at times. In the last 30 minutes though, we get quite a bit longer, lingering, shots of the creature and those don't look quite so remarkable – usual SyFy fare. However I didn't mind it as much as I normally do with say, their snake effects (as one example), because the design of the creature is just so awesome and unique that I never got sick of seeing it, no matter how crappy the effects got at times. And really, the only shots that truly looked dreadful were close-ups of it's weirdly square-shaped head, which thankfully there wasn't too many of. I was also surprised with how accurate the creature was portrayed. Now I'm no mythology expert by a long shot, and the only knowledge I have on the Manticore is from trivia cards that came with certain Monsters in my Pocket boxsets I would get as a kid from time to time, but based off the knowledge I have from that, this version of the creature hit every point. So often SyFy makes up their own rules, even with already-established monsters, so it was nice to see them follow the mythology proper with this one. And as an extension of me being happy with SyFy's handling of the creature – for the first time that I have ever seen, they finally did not kill it by blowing it up. I won't reveal how they do it, but rest assured, it's for once not due to heavy explosions (though it's not for lack of trying; seriously, sometimes I think the execs at SyFy really work for Divatox of Power Rangers Turbo fame).

They did seem to miss an opportunity though by only having the one Manticore in the movie. Most SyFy movies seem to have either just one monster, or a large group of monsters, but never a small multiple number such as just 2 or 3, and the first little bit of the movie made me think there would actually be two this time, but they do away with that idea pretty quickly. It's not such a bad choice overall though, as it does make the climax pretty suspenseful by having just the one creature (due to the way it has to be destroyed, it wouldn't have been nearly as suspenseful with the two of them around). I also wasn't so fond of the whole amulet sub-plot and whoever holds it has control of the Manticore. As I said at the beginning, I hate having human villains in a monster movie, because it takes some of the threat off of the monster, and that exact thing is what happens here. Although thankfully it's not really touched upon at all until towards the end. Even then, that entire sub-plot pretty much went nowhere and had no impact on the movie whatsoever other then to add a said human villain into the mix which, like the amulet itself, pretty much went nowhere anyway, so really, what was even the point in having it?

The human villain's mundane murder of a couple characters aside, the deaths turned out to be pretty brutal and gory, which surprised me for a TV movie, and especially for a SyFy movie which normally have pretty generic death scenes. The surrounding action scenes that most of those deaths happen during were also pretty intense and suspenseful; the movie certainly had no problems displaying awesome action scene after awesome action scene. Even though some were seemingly taken directly out of Aliens, they were still quite enjoyable, with one of my favorites being a shot of the Manticore, wings spread wide open, flying through a giant stain glass window to attack the people inside; such an amazing shot.

Out of the almost-dozen SyFy Channel movies I've seen in the last 2 weeks, Manticore is definitely above average for them, and one of the better ones so far. It'll be one I can easily see myself re-watching in the future.

8/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Decoys 2: The Second Seduction (2007)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

  
COMPANY: Decoys Production

RUNTIME: 94 mins

FORMAT: DVD

PLOT: The sexy alien invasion force returns to Earth to carry out the same plan as in the first movie, but this time at a different university, located in a different city, and with an updated plan of attack.

REVIEW: Shortly after posting my review of the first Decoys movie, it was brought to my attention that there actually is a sequel to Decoys out there, so I scrambled to get my hands on a copy. As soon as I did, I popped it in, anxious to view the next chapter in this awesomely-campy Canadian sci-fi/comedy series.

Despite the basic plot sounding like a carbon copy repeat of the first movie – it's really not. This one manages to take the same plot, but do completely different stuff with it, which both worked and didn't work, depending on the part of the movie.

With this taking place at a different school in a different part of Canada, we're introduced to a whole new cast of characters for this movie. We've got the main lead and his dorky best female friend who's pretty much just a copy of the same kind of character from the first movie down to a T – she even has feelings for the main character but he doesn't realize it himself. There's also a trio of his friends who are gamer nerds, with one or two being jock-types. They all start a kind of secret tournament to see which one of the group can rack up 'the most points' by how many girls they can sleep with, leading up a big annual End of Semester campus party. There's not much more to really say about any of these characters as they're all pretty bland and forgettable. One of the things I mentioned in my review of the first movie is that in many movies like this, despite saying and showing us that these people are best friends, they do a piss poor job of actually portraying it. This would be one such movie, as I didn't believe for a second that any of this group would possibly be friends with each other. They all have zero chemistry together. Although I was happy to see that more of them join the main character this time around in his fight against the aliens, as opposed to the first movie where that guy was mostly going solo in his attack the entire time.

Other then the lead teens, I was quite surprised that a couple of the new, more-aged characters, were actually played by some pretty well-established actors. We've got Dina Meyer  (Starship Troopers. Saw series) as a psychiatrist and Tobin Bell (Boogyman 2, Saw series) as the University's science professor, although it's quite hard to get past his role of Jigsaw from the Saw movies every time he speaks. While neither have any large amount of screen time, they do get a decent amount and have some interesting things to do. Certainly more interesting then the two cops from the first movie, that's for sure. Also surprisingly, and very-much welcomed, are two actors from the first movie back to reprise their roles. There's Kim Poirier back as the leading sexy alien babe (she was the one sexy alien babe interested in the lead character's best friend in the first movie), however in this one she doesn't play exactly the same character. If you remember, she died in the first movie so this time it's simply a new, much more vicious, alien just using the same human skin design as a way to screw with someone's head. This time around, instead of being one of the little worker bees out trying to get laid by someone in the student body of the university, she instead works undercover as a newly-transferred doctor/psychiatrist at the hospital that makes visits to the school to keep an eye on everything, and is seemingly in-charge of this nest of sexy alien babes. The Mother of them, if you will. And while she doesn't have a whole lot to do during the movie beyond spy on one of the characters from a distance and do various things to screw with his mind, she does end up being the 'final boss' of the movie, so to speak, and was quite enjoyable in that fashion.

Accompanying her is also Corey Sevier back as an older, slightly more-crazy Luke, the lead character from the first movie. If you remember in my review of that movie, I said I was hoping he and his tomboy female friend would return for any future sequels, and I got half of that wish come true. He's far less dorky this time around and much more composed and intense, showing some decent character growth from the first movie, and while he plays a bit smaller of a role this time (more of a supporting character then a main one), I'm fine with it due to the way he plays it. He has the scattered appearance throughout the first part of the movie as Tobin Bell's teacher assistant, a scene or two with his shrink (played by Dina Meyer) since he's currently plagued by many sleepless nights and daytime nightmares due to the events of the first movie and due to Kim Poirier's new character messing with his head unbeknowest to him, and then a scene or two of him suspecting that something isn't right around campus and looking into it. He doesn't really get a chance to truly shine until about half an hour from the end when he comes across Kim Poirier's character face-to-face in the flesh and realizes that he was right about the alien invasion, and that he's not crazy. He then saves the current cast of main characters from a raging alien attack like the complete bad ass he's become between movies, then proceeds to drop some knowledge on them about the invading aliens and trains them in awesome sexy alien babe-dispatching methods. The only disappointing thing about his return is that the female character from the first movie that ended up with him at the end of that one is nowhere to be found, and her absence is never addressed, which is unusual given what happened at the end of the first movie. The scene itself is addressed, but not what happened to her, or where she is now.

And of course I have to mention the sexy blond alien babes once again. Everything established about their species in the first movie is carried over here and also further-expanded upon. So often when a series is handed over to someone new, they tend to either change or outright ignore certain rules, so it's nice to see that these people pay respect to what has already been established. Of course we have plenty of nude and barely-clothed scenes with them in it – possibly even more then the first movie had, but we also get the nice addition of them wearing certain, um, fantasy clothing in some scenes, thanks to a new power of theirs that wasn't on-display on the first movie. Also, where the first movie portrayed the aliens in almost a victim kind of way and made you really care for them and kind of understand why they're doing what they're doing, this time around the aliens are portrayed as vicious evil bitches that must be stopped at all costs. The change is a bit jarring at first but after thinking about it, I'm perfectly fine with it. Like I said above, this movie takes the same plot as the first, but does it's own stuff with it to make it enough of a separate entity to be worth your time, and this is just one of the things it does to make itself different. Plus it creates more situations were we get better, and longer, looks at the aliens in their true alien forms – and they look simply bad ass. Props off to the creature designer of this movie, because he did an excellent job with the special effects for the aliens, even making two or three different designs, depending on the character. In the first movie you only ever got a few very quick glances at the creatures, and when you did you could tell they just used the exact same CGI model for every single one, but in this one we get some good practical man-in-suit shots, and a couple different designs at that. And lastly, where the nest of them failed in the first movie by bringing too much attention to themselves due to leaving the dead bodies everywhere, the nest in this one is much more smart and they make sure to get rid of the dead bodies themselves, leaving no evidence around to cause suspicion of their activities, which actually becomes a plot point when Luke from the first movie starts suspecting something isn't right and tries looking into it and warn people about it.

While the acting isn't anything to write home about, it must be noted that it is improved from the first movie, even by the returning actors. Of course, by having veterans such as Dina Meyer and Tobin Bell in your movie, that certainly helps to elevate the bar a bit. Another improvement comes by way of the special effects. Like I already mentioned, in the first movie everything was done with quick CGI and this time around we get a lot more practical physical effect shots, and because of that, we get longer, better, shots of them. The aliens themselves, their tentacles as they burst out of the stomachs of their human forms, all of it just looks so much better this time around. Even the small amount of shots that are CGI are done with better, upgraded, effects.

Not everything was peaches and cream though. The biggest fault of this movie isn't that the characters were uninteresting and bland, like I touched on above. No, it's that for the majority of it – it was just plain boring. Not a whole lot really happens for quite a large portion of it. And even that wouldn't be too bad if the movie took that slow pace to have some good character-building scenes like the first did, but they didn't. By the end of the movie, I didn't give two shits about any of the new characters, with most of them being not only forgettable, but largely annoying to boot. The movie is actually a bit shorter then the first yet while watching it, it feels so much longer. Once things finally get going though, it does try to return to the campy fun that the first movie captured so well, but doesn't quite reach the level of camp that that one held. Absent are the cheesy memorable one-liners and dialog that was on display in the first movie. “You were right. There ARE blond aliens on campus!” is the best one in the movie, and really, one of the only ones. This movie actually plays itself off as more straight and serious for the majority of it then even the first half of the first movie did, which I'm not a fan of simply because my favorite stuff from that one were the more over-the-top campy scenes, and it's important that a movie of this kind doesn't try to take itself too seriously, and this one seemed to be on the edge of doing just that. However, there were a couple scenes towards the end where things seemed like they could be headed in a more campy, comedic direction. For example, there was a scene where they used the main human girl to scan the dance floor to try to determine which girls were aliens since she wouldn't be fooled by the hormones they gave off. The music used, mixed with how the character was portrayed for that scene, really made it quite funny. Another scene would be shortly after that part, when the group of them all gear up with various home-made heat weapons to fight off the aliens with. And of course there was the scene where Luke from the first movie was going all crazy in the hospital upon seeing Kim Poirier's character for the first time in this movie. Unfortunately, despite these scenes and a few other minor ones, it never quite gets to the level of fun or camp that the first movie had.

I was quite happy though to see that much like with the previous movie, this returns to the winter landscape that I so-love in movies and wish more movies utilized it. Also much like the first movie, there were some well-played twists in the plot that I didn't see coming at all, so kudos for those. It also did quite well with the added element of 'Is *insert interchangeable female character* an alien, or isn't she?' paranoia that the first movie never touched on but this one did a few times, and ended quite humorously in a couple cases.

So in closing, while a different crew made this movie then the first (different director and different scriptwriter), they managed to properly hold their own with someone else's material and improved many aspects, but lack of any interesting main characters, lack of fun campy scenes, and a very slow pace prevents it from being as good as the first movie. Still, while not as good, it still is good in it's own right, and did manage to be a worthy addition to the series all the same.

With the cliffhanger ending given to us in this movie, I would love to see one final entry made to finish out the story and end it as a fun little trilogy. However, since this movie came out in 2007 and it's now 2011 with not a single whisper of a third movie being made, I believe we'll just have to come to terms with the fact that this is all we'll ever have for the series, and we'll never get a proper conclusion to the story. (Hey, I suddenly just got an idea for a new SyFy Channel TV series...)

6/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Decoys (2004)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: Téléfilm Canada

RUNTIME: 99 mins

FORMAT: DVD

PLOT: A group of aliens, in disguise as female humans, infiltrate a Canadian university in the hopes of mating and producing offspring. It's up to one guy and his friends to put a stop to this secret invasion, all the while being suspected by the police for the recent rash of murders caused by these aliens

REVIEW: I've been having recurring nights lately where no matter how tired I am, I just can't get to sleep. I probably should go see someone about that and maybe get some sleeping medication or something. In the meantime though, I've been using my sleepless nights to watch some campy bad movie goodness. One of the movies that came my way via 4AM movie watching last night would be Decoys - the low budget Canadian answer to the 90's cult erotic sci-fi flick Species. To be honest, I wasn't looking for anything more then a movie to fall asleep to, but within 20 minutes I knew I'd be staying awake long enough to finish it, because I was having such a blast with it. Easiest way to describe the movie when talking about it to friends – American Pie meets Species.

Much like with Species, there's a horny female alien (actually several in this movie), looking for the perfect mate to father their offspring (anyone the aliens mate with seem to die before they can finish, so they're looking for people who can withstand having sex with them). And what better place for finding a perfect mate then a bustling party university where, much like American Pie, our main leads are trying to loose their virginity. Also taking a page from Species, these aliens can change between human form and creepy tentacled-alien creature at will, and do so whenever threatened or in the height of their sexual activities.

That's where the similarities with Species and American Pie end however. In this, the main human character is a bit of a geek who's best friends with one of the party-going hornball guys that one of the aliens sets her sights on. After witnessing some of the aliens change, our hero tries to warn his friend – and everyone else – but just gets laughed off, so he takes matters into his own hands. Discovering that the aliens thrive on the cold and thus are scared of fire, he sets out with a flame thrower on a one-man mission to save the world. And it's at that point the movie unexpectedly turns into a full-on comedy.

And that's the movie's biggest fault, if you ask me. Not that it turns into a comedy per sey (I actually feel that's when the movie is at it's best), but that it just changes gears so abruptly and so far in. Personally, I really loved all the comedy bits of the main guy running around campus like a maniac, screaming his lungs out, shouting one-liners like Bruce Campbell is going out of style, kicking down doors and firing a flame thrower to roast the alien girls alive right as they're about to have sex with some guys. But what bothered me was that the majority of the movie played it mostly straight, and tried to be serious to a degree (sure, it still had some silly campy moments throughout, but overall the tone was mostly straight), then there comes a part about 20 minutes or so from the end where it just does a complete 180 into slapstick comedy territory for the rest of the movie. It almost seemed like they weren’t sure how they wanted to proceed with the tone of the movie, so just decided to do both, and it's quite jarring and takes you out of it for a bit. Really would have preferred they stayed with one tone or the other instead of switching part-way. Reading other reviews online, that seemed to be an aspect that turned quite a few people off from the movie.

My other complaint is with the acting. There's not very many scenes in the movie, from anyone, that's well-acted. While that doesn't seem to be as noticeable in the more-comedic final portion of the movie, it's distractingly noticeable in the first half as well as in any scene where strong emotions of sadness or anger are supposed to be present but they're just portrayed so badly.

Those are really the only main complaints I have though; everything else about the movie was just plain ol' fun and I had a blast with it. As with a movie of this kind (I.E. teen sex comedy; erotic alien invasion), there are plenty of young hot women on display in skimpy clothing. In terms of nudity, there is surprisingly very little with only one scene at the beginning really coming to mind, however every other scene seems to have one of the hot leading ladies of the movie stripped down to her bra or other scantily-clad forms of clothing. And don't get me wrong, this movie isn't one of those that shows nudity or near-nudity just for the sake of showing some skin, with nothing else going for it. Sure, it does have that in spades, but it also includes other things such as interesting characters that you love to watch as the events of the movie unfolds.

First there's the aforementioned main character who can never catch a break when it comes to the ladies of the campus...that is until the overly-sexy blond alien babes show up and a one of them takes an interest in him. But as soon as he finds out the truth, he wastes no time in waging war on the alien species to save his school – and the planet. It's at that point that the actor's performance goes into 'over the top, crazy, and campy' territory, but in a 'that's the point of it' kind of way and made many comedic scenes in the second half of the movie pretty laugh-out-loud 'what the heck am I watching' kind of funny, and it's at these points that the bad acting actually helped add to the entertainment as opposed to distract from it like earlier in the movie. Then there's his party-loving virgin best friend/roommate who also gets himself into a bit of trouble with a sexy alien babe, only to not listen to his friend's crazy warnings and...well...that ends about as well as expected. However the death actually hit a bit harder then I expected it to, and I was quite surprised at just how much I cared for this character by the time his end came, and I didn't really want him to go. I actually would have loved to see him work side-by-side with the main character in taking down the alien menace, but oh well. His death is really what sets the main character on his path of stopping the invasion. He also gets his very own out-of-place slow song playing over his death, but it really came across as more hilarious then anything serious, and with the style of this movie being what it is, I have no idea if that was the intent or not.

Next we got the tomboy female friend to the main guy, who acts as kind of his partner-in-crime throughout the movie and very-obviously has a crush on him that he just doesn't notice himself, which ends on an interesting note. I won't spoil it, but it was definitely fun and I hope to see these two characters back in any sequels there may be, however I highly doubt it considering the end of the movie. Still, I can always hope. And speaking of hope, I was actually hoping to see her take a much more aggressive stance against the alien babes, since they were, after all, trying to sleep with the guy she likes; maybe a good girl-on-girl cat fight or something, but unfortunately we don't get anything like that and she remains working behind-the-scenes mostly as kind of this movie's Chloe Sullivan, and even disappears from the movie all together for a large chunk, which is a shame cause she was one of my favorite characters and would have loved to see her do more during the climatic final 20 minutes or so.

Rounding out the main human characters are the two cops investigating the mysterious murders popping up around the campus. Personally, I could have done without these characters. They were portrayed quite poorly and didn't really add anything to the overall movie other then more minutes to the run time. The male cop was annoying as all hell and the female cop supposedly used to have a relationship with the main hero, despite looking about twice his age, and like with everything regarding the cop characters – it went absolutely nowhere and had absolutly no bearing on the rest of the movie whatsoever. And the worst thing? The male cop is so annoying, I was waiting anxiously for his death scene – except we never get it. Out of the few characters to survive, he had to be one of them. Actually, he completely drops out of the movie until he shows up again for about 30 seconds towards the end, and not in any 'shows up at the last minute to save the day' capacity either. Just in yet another useless appearance.

And of course, there's the nest of sexy alien babes. And sexy is the best way to describe them. They certainly weren’t hired for their acting abilities, but in a movie where they play sex-crazed attractive women...I'm totally fine with that. What makes these characters so interesting is that unlike in Species, these aliens have a decent grasp on how to portray human emotion, to a degree. They're not perfect in that aspect but they're far from the monotone robot-like personality of the creature from Species. Actually, their emotions play a rather large part in the plot of the movie which is something Species has never bothered to really explore, and it's that aspect that really sets this movie apart from being 'just another Species clone'. We also get a bit of the backstory of their race and why exactly they've come to Earth, and more specifically, why they picked Canada. Sure, it's only a short 3 or 4 line explanation, but one that really worked for me and added a bit more depth to the characters that normally don't really get it in these types of movies.

The movie also has a rather well-written script. For instance, they have you actually believe that the two main character best friends are best friends, unlike a lot of movies that say it, and even show it, but don't do a good job of portraying it. It also takes some level of talent to make you care just as much for the invading alien species as it does their potential victims. This movie did an excellent job of making me care about not only the main characters, but also the invading sexy alien babes, none of which I was really expecting to care for. There's also some quirky and fun dialog thrown in: “She screwed him to death!”, “They've come to Earth to sleep with us and kill us all!”, “With you lately, it's all about cameras, conspiracies, and ass-kicking alien girls from Hooters planet!”, “He thinks you're part of a Hottie Invasion Force from Hell”, “That's it, ladies, show me your navels”, and my personal favorite comes as the hero bursts into a room of sexy alien babes with his flame thrower - “Belt of Orion? How about belt of O-Fryin'!” and then you can probably guess what happens next. The movie is pretty much filled with dialog like that, so fans of campy B-movie goodness can't help but fall in love with it, with a large smile on their face. At least that's how I was every time a character shouted out another such cheesy line. Add into the mix some unexpected plot twists throughout that I honestly didn't see coming, and the writer of this movie has got me as a fan for all future projects.

And to add to everything else as kind of the sweet cherry on top: Since the aliens thrive on the cold, the movie takes place in the middle of winter, with snow on the ground. I don't know why, but I always love it when movies take place in the snow – adds to the atmosphere I think. It's just a little observation but one that I much appreciate. And their reason for picking Canada as their initial invasion point is due to the infamous cold winters here, which I got a good chuckle out of. Sure, when you give it much thought it doesn't make any sense, since there are just-as-populated city locations in Russia that get even colder, but any excuse to have an alien invasion flick take place in my country is fine by me.

I'm a huge Species fan and while this isn't technically a Species movie, it felt enough like one that it satisfied my late-night alien sex shlock for the time being, but also did enough things different that it kept my interest in it as a separate entity and made me want to see more of these characters in potential future installments.

8/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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