This movie seemed a bit hard to rate, but not impossibly so.
Let's list the positives:
First of all--Scott Bakula and Stephen Dorff. Sad that they've aged, who who doesn't. They're still great actors. (This film doesn't seem to fit either one of them too well, for reasons outlined below.)
Second--It's B&W. Edgy, but it fits the cool desert, retro-futuristic, mid-century sci-fi vibe. All the scientific equipment looks 1960ish and the vehicle we get to see reinforces this. Oh, and casette tapes. There's ads on the telly for WW2 British commodities you can buy with ration cards (like powdered eggs). The rest seem to be steeped in sex and excess, including the most disgusting breakfast cereal commercial ever created.
Third--Cool, mid-century avant-garde desert palace homes. The scientist's lair sort of blends into the rock outcroppings. Not my taste, but this is unique. His brother's home is a boxy, glass affair in the middle of the desert plain, also of similar provenance.
Now for the negatives:
This film had really bad dialogue and the plot was all chopped up. Imagine a bad mortal kombat, stop-motion fight sequence, gratuitous violence, scene progression that makes no sense, bizarre and unclear moties and other movie tropes thrown in together. It doesn't seem to hold up.
Later, I discovered that aside from the basic plot outline, there was NO script (imagine that) and it doesn't feel like the actors were actually directed too closely at all.
It's avante-garde and experimental and throwback. Interesting CGI effects where leotard clad women sort of appear into the landscape (bones first) and then carry off fertile women to join their cult to 'save' humanity. That was cool, but strange.
The basic premise is that an immortality serum engineered by the scientist's father and perfected by his son has so thoroughly corrupted the world that everyone lives for pleasure. Oh, and it sterilises all the women who take it. Not a great plan.
Scientist decides to ratchet it up to not only grant immortality, but to dial back the clock and grant eternal youth for those who aged prior to the original serum. It has a dark side to how it's produced.
Can't figure out who the dream girls or the semi-supernatural brothers are supposed to be, either, but the brothers took on human bodies and then gave them up. They give the pleasure-girl a mental enema so she can see stars and her eyes can light up, too. She's pure, so she gets 'saved' by dream girl cult and bears a tree with living sausages all the girls in dream girl cult seem to love. The father is apparently one of the supernatural brothers who fell in love with her and with being human. There's lots of sex in this film and most of it is kinda' gross. Scientist's brother is a body-builder and has a body-builder 'companion' and a body-builder servant who fawns over him and seems to have an electric-shock fetish. Truly bizarre character development.
Old doc becomes an incredible hulk because the supernatural brothers force-feed him his new serum to punish him (or 'free' him, they can't seem to make up their minds).
Everything comes to a head on the scientist's birthday and it gets really gross and nasty.
One word: disappointing.
Let's list the positives:
First of all--Scott Bakula and Stephen Dorff. Sad that they've aged, who who doesn't. They're still great actors. (This film doesn't seem to fit either one of them too well, for reasons outlined below.)
Second--It's B&W. Edgy, but it fits the cool desert, retro-futuristic, mid-century sci-fi vibe. All the scientific equipment looks 1960ish and the vehicle we get to see reinforces this. Oh, and casette tapes. There's ads on the telly for WW2 British commodities you can buy with ration cards (like powdered eggs). The rest seem to be steeped in sex and excess, including the most disgusting breakfast cereal commercial ever created.
Third--Cool, mid-century avant-garde desert palace homes. The scientist's lair sort of blends into the rock outcroppings. Not my taste, but this is unique. His brother's home is a boxy, glass affair in the middle of the desert plain, also of similar provenance.
Now for the negatives:
This film had really bad dialogue and the plot was all chopped up. Imagine a bad mortal kombat, stop-motion fight sequence, gratuitous violence, scene progression that makes no sense, bizarre and unclear moties and other movie tropes thrown in together. It doesn't seem to hold up.
Later, I discovered that aside from the basic plot outline, there was NO script (imagine that) and it doesn't feel like the actors were actually directed too closely at all.
It's avante-garde and experimental and throwback. Interesting CGI effects where leotard clad women sort of appear into the landscape (bones first) and then carry off fertile women to join their cult to 'save' humanity. That was cool, but strange.
The basic premise is that an immortality serum engineered by the scientist's father and perfected by his son has so thoroughly corrupted the world that everyone lives for pleasure. Oh, and it sterilises all the women who take it. Not a great plan.
Scientist decides to ratchet it up to not only grant immortality, but to dial back the clock and grant eternal youth for those who aged prior to the original serum. It has a dark side to how it's produced.
Can't figure out who the dream girls or the semi-supernatural brothers are supposed to be, either, but the brothers took on human bodies and then gave them up. They give the pleasure-girl a mental enema so she can see stars and her eyes can light up, too. She's pure, so she gets 'saved' by dream girl cult and bears a tree with living sausages all the girls in dream girl cult seem to love. The father is apparently one of the supernatural brothers who fell in love with her and with being human. There's lots of sex in this film and most of it is kinda' gross. Scientist's brother is a body-builder and has a body-builder 'companion' and a body-builder servant who fawns over him and seems to have an electric-shock fetish. Truly bizarre character development.
Old doc becomes an incredible hulk because the supernatural brothers force-feed him his new serum to punish him (or 'free' him, they can't seem to make up their minds).
Everything comes to a head on the scientist's birthday and it gets really gross and nasty.
One word: disappointing.