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 obocop's" Peter Weller headlines
"Screamers" as Hendricksson, the burnt out commanding officer of a
futuristic military faction called the Alliance. Hendricksson and his men have
been fighting a war against the rival N.E.B. soldiers on an isolated mining
planet for the last 10 years. During the war, the Alliance had built fast-moving
androids with buzz saws attached for lethal effect and unleashed them on the
planet. Called screamers, the androids burrow through the ground to attack
anything with a pulse. But the screamers have run amok, and now attack anything
and everything, including Alliance soldiers.
Hendricksson soon realizes that the corporations back on
Earth have given them up for dead. The war, it seems, has moved onto a new
mining planet. Determined to get the hell out of Dodge, Hendricksson accepts an
offer of alliance with the N.E.B.s and proceeds to the enemy camp with rookie
Ace Jefferson (Andrew Lauer). But upon reaching the N.E.B. base, Hendricksson
discovers that all of the N.E.B. soldiers are dead -- except for two, the
psychotic Becker and the paranoid Ross, who are joined by a civilian name
Jessica (Jennifer Rubin). Oh, and those pesky screamers have now evolved into
human screamers!
Despite its obvious ambitions, 1995's "Screamers" could
never break away from its B-Movie vibe and limited budget. The film could have
been more than what made it onto the screen, and I suspect the screenplay is
probably more than its many shrieking buzz saw robots. The movie itself is based
on a short story by prolific sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick, who has been
responsible for some inspired sci-fi movie adaptations including "Blade
Runner" and "Total
Recall", and had two of his short stories adapted into movies in 2002
alone ("Impostor"
and "Minority
Report").
One of the biggest problems with "Screamers" is
the near absence of a likeable character, or at least someone who we actually
give a damn about escaping those slice-and-dice robots. Except for Jennifer
Rubin's Jessica, the rest of the cast could all get decapitated and no one would
care. And even Jessica, who harbors a dark secret, becomes a moot point
because… Well, I won't reveal the film's big twist, but if you pay close
enough attention to the way director Christian Duguay ("Art of War")
frames various scenes, you'll be able to guess the twist before it comes.
The screenplay for "Screamers" shows some promise
as a Cautionary Tale about the uselessness of war and corporate entanglements,
but I was too busy noticing the film's many cheap matte background paintings to
pay attention. In any case, the people delivering snippets of the Cautionary
Tale are so unlikable I wouldn't have cared what they were saying anyway. Who
are these jerks to tell me about the black hearts of humanity when they prove to
be even more soulless than those shiny screamers?
As a straight sci-fi film, "Screamers" has enough
plot holes in it to bury a hundred screamers. The entire problem, not
surprisingly, involves the presence (or in some cases, sudden lack of presence)
of the screamers themselves. At one moment Duguay is giving us the impression
that the screamers are everywhere, and the next moment our characters are out in
the open after being knocked unconscious by a blast and many hours later
wake up with all their limbs intact. How nice of those underground-burrowing
screamers not bother them while they were all unconscious.
That doesn't mean "Screamers" is all bad. At one
point a new type of screamers that comes in the form of young boys called
"Davids" stalk the characters. The Davids move freely around the
devasted cities waiting to entrap unknowing victims with their innocence. The
fact that the Davids carry a ragged teddy bear with them at all times, and keep
repeating, "Can I come with you?" over and over, makes them extremely
creepy. By comparison, the screamers that race back and forth under the ground
only to leap up at their victims are just plain silly.
As the lead, Peter Weller plays his character as an
educated man, which I took to be the case since he listens to Mozart and quotes
Shakespeare. Although I have to wonder if Hendricksson is so smart why did he
bring the wet-behind-the-ears Jefferson along on such an important mission?
Besides being unable to shut up, Jefferson is obsessed with a pair of VR goggles
and CD player, both of which nearly gets him killed on multiple occasions. Also
I have to wonder why Jefferson, a gung-ho soldier, would put on earphones and
crank up his music while he and Hendricksson are walking through a field
full of screamers just waiting to slice off their heads. Is this kid really this
thickheaded? The answer is Yes.
Like a lot of B-movies, sometimes the budget for
"Screamers" really shows. The movie takes place in a bunker, in the
desert, and what looks like a refinery plant. There are no big spectacular
action sequences, but instead there are a couple of gun battles and one big
explosion involving something called a Pluto bomb. Actually, the film's most
impressive special effects is a completely CGI trip through space at the
beginning of the movie.
There's no doubt "Screamers" could have been a
lot better than it is. The whole sequence at the refinery is the best of the movie, managing to elicit both a couple of scare scenes and a lot of
creepiness. The rest, unfortunately, doesn't live up to that middle section.
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