Time Machine: Rise of the Morlocks (2011 TV Movie) User Reviews

Good ideas, bad execution...

[TheLittleSongbird · 3/10 · 14 March 2012]

I often find SyFy movies to be mostly awful movies, but I keep watching them for the novelty value and also to see whether they are ever going to make a worthwhile movie to match their TV series. Well actually, they did do The Lost Future, I personally found that surprisingly good if imperfect. Morlocks sadly is to me another bad movie of theirs.

Is it their worst? No, Morlocks is nowhere near as unwatchable as Titanic II, Quantum Apocalypse, Battle of Los Angeles, Alien vs. Hunter and 2010: Moby Dick. However it is still not very good. It gets some good points for a good idea and decent turns from Christina Cole and Robert Picardo, though both have shown they can do better with better material.

Production values: Pretty lousy really. Morlocks is not the very worst-looking SyFy movie, that's possibly Titanic II, but there's nothing exceptional in how it looks. It is lit in a rather dull way, complete with haphazard editing. The CGI effects are awful, quite possibly the cheapest and most crude effects I've seen in a while, the Morlocks are horribly rendered and don't look scary at all. I do realise that Morlocks, like all of SyFy's resume, is a low-budget film, but I don't think that excuses a lack of quality in the finished products. Like I've said before, it seemed as though they were going for quantity in alternative to quality.

Music: Nothing special, in fact rather forgettable and obtrusive even at times. Also a lot of it is in a slow tempo/rhythm, giving a furthermore sluggish feel to the film.

Script: To be honest, I wasn't expecting good scripting from SyFy. Even in their few more tolerable efforts, it is one of the weaker assets. It was pretty much what I was anticipating really, cheesy dialogue, a lot of sci-fi babble and technical jargon. In regard to the latter, I got the feeling that even the writers didn't know what they were talking about. The whole "the Morlocks were here" exchange(especially the groan-worthy "because they're American? I don't know" bit) was particularly stupid.

Story: Loosely based on HG Wells' The Time Machine, the idea was really good and had the potential to be so. The execution however was bad, worse than bad more than often. The story is told in a very predictable and pedantic fashion, with none of the Morlocks scenes coming across as thrilling, and the build-ups have a complete lack of suspense. Also those looking for an adaptation of The Time Machine will be disappointed, it bears almost no similarity and is no different to almost everything else SyFy has done, complete with contrived motivations and an anti-climatic ending.

Direction: One word, incompetent. Far too laid back, with a lot of scenes lazily shot and staged in a clumsy and uninspired manner.

Characters: Typical SyFy clichés, the bad guy, heroic officer, beautiful damsel-in-distress and so forth.

Acting: Nothing great. Christina Cole is not great, but also not bad, at least she is more than a pretty face. Robert Picardo deserves better, but has some surprising subtlety in his performance. A decent actor David Hewlett may be, but can somebody give him a more interesting character to play, one that isn't too similar to everything else he's done, and one that enables him to do much less than moaning and whining.

Overall, not the worst I've seen from SyFy, but it really ruined the potential of one of the better ideas they have ever had. 3/10 Bethany Cox

Unexpectedly Marginally Adequate

[HeadMMoid · 4/10 · 25 September 2011]

A made-for-SyFy movie -- everyone knows it is going to be bad, probably very, very bad. While Morlocks is not a "good" movie, it does unexpectedly rise above the typical movie garbage on SyFy; up to the level of marginally adequate.

While the movie has the standard amount of bad or even meaningless science, overall it has the unexpected good sense to just not try to explain some things. Of course, all of the characters are dumbed-down to insure that no one does something too smart which might end the story half way through the movie. Also, the plot is completely transparent. Within the first fifteen minutes almost the entire story line is evident. Plot progression is strictly by-the-book, and almost completely lacking in imagination.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about the movie is its ability to combine so many standard disaster movie conventions blatantly into one story. 1) The major disaster was unexpected but probably preventable, not fully or correctly understood by the experts, and not stoppable by simply pulling the plug, but rather requires exactly one special person to save things. 2) There is a stereotypical bad guy military commanding officer with some sort of ulterior motive, who steadily goes completely out of control, but who is never questioned by his subordinates. 3) There is a rogue or disillusioned scientist who wants nothing to do with the project, but comes back for personal reasons, usually an ex-spouse or ex-lover. 4) There is a heroic, almost superhuman, junior officer who although at times is a hard-ass, is naive regarding his command officer, but is extremely capable and personally quite brave. 5) There is a beautiful girl who must be rescued by one of the main male characters, possibly to the detriment of the mission to save the Earth/project/etc. 6) There is a beautiful auxiliary fighter who is jaded but able to kick butt at critical moments, usually saving secondary male characters. 7) The ending cannot allow things to be resolved, but rather there must be either a potential continuing problem or a tie-in to the original problem. 8) There are many more, but the point should be clear. The plot was written from a checklist of stereotypes and clichés.

The movie has some good points which should be noted (considering its pedigree). 1) It is reasonably fast paced. There are no long waits for the plot developments. 2) There was nothing confusing about the plot. Everything is pretty much up front for the viewer to see. Even the hidden agenda is easily seen and understood from (too) early in the movie. 3) Unexpectedly the acting was generally quite decent. No one is going to win an award for this, but the actors appear to put effort into their characters. 4) The CGI is tolerable but by no means notable. By SyFy movie standards it is even good. 5) While there is violent death and some blood, it is not excessive and is consistent with the reasonable needs of the story (there was the potential for a lot of needless gore).

The two best known cast members are David Hewlett (Stargate SG-1 and Stargate: Atlantis) as Radnor and Robert Picardo (Star Trek Voyager and Stargate: Atlantis) as Colonel Wichita. Hewlett brings his Dr. Rodney McKay character straight into Morlocks. Except for lacking McKay's humor, much of the movie could easily be mistaken for part of an episode of Stargate: Atlantis. Picardo brings his heavy / bad guy character seen in a number of movies and shows over the past few years. While at times he is reasonably convincing it such roles, it doesn't work as well here. The problem seems to be that his character so quickly goes off the deep end, to a point which would, in a non-contrived setting, result in his being relieved of command. That may stem from bad direction, poor general writing for his character, and certainly an obvious lack of knowledge by the writers about how the military and military research projects really work. Unfortunately, this was the least convincing of all the characters.

Finally, the movie is worth watching at least once. Go in knowing that it is a great idea which is poorly executed, and always remember the horrible reputation of the production source (SyFy). If that is done, the viewer will get what is expected and it should be worth the time.

A waste of 85 minutes which looks like a video game

[zehaas · 2/10 · 12 July 2012]

The production values would indicate someone spent some bucks on this film and cast. It's too bad they didn't pre-screen it with someone other than a ninth-grade gamer to check for plot holes big enough to drive a Hummer (and then elevator cab) through.

My biggest problem is with the look and feel, and that falls on the director. Scenes that didn't have to be shot hand-held were, even when a simple tripod would do, and the effect is nauseating; don't show this on a boat, anyone prone to sea sickness will be sent right over the edge by the constant shifting of the frame.

Also to the look and feel: Why does every Sci-Fi/SyFy movie have to look like an X-box 360 game? What happened to the good old days when directors knew how to set up a shot and a scene? If you have to push this hard to engender some sort of excitement, then the plot needs serious assistance.

Don't make the mistake I made. I kept watching and hoping something original or interesting would happen, but this is nothing more than a static version of Half Life, Black Ops, or /insert your favorite video game here\.

A potentially good idea, as badly executed as possible

[Livewire242 · 1/10 · 25 September 2011]

"Morlocks" are a race from H. G. Wells' "The Time Machine". When I see this in the TV listings, I'm thinking SyFy has come up with a fun new spin on the story. But other than the fact that time travel figures in to the story peripherally, there's no similarity at all. Even for SyFy, known for its dreadful production values, this is an all-time worst.

The CGI is so bad it would have been embarrassing in the 90s. Today, it's unforgivable. The director (if they actually had one) gave up even having the actors pretend to fire their guns and just animated muzzle flashes on them--even on the guns that weren't aimed at the enemy.

Things like breaking glass and tanks busting through walls look like they were animated by first-week film school students who just started learning CGI.

David Hewlett shows that he is perfectly capable of playing the exact same character in everything he does, as does Robert Picardo.

I have no idea how I managed to watch the whole thing. But at no point did I consider my time well spent.

If only I'd read the reviews before watching it....

[mboyd1986 · 1/10 · 30 September 2011]

Dear, oh, dear. Surely Robert Picardo must have known this was going to be a rubbish movie. But maybe, like me, he thought it had potential and was worth investing in. How wrong we were.

Such bad scripts, bad plot, bad direction! If only the basic idea behind the story could have been developed properly, this could have been such a good movie.

Some of the actors were actually not bad, so really the only mistake they made was to be involved in such a poorly directed movie. So the director is the one who should take all the blame for this fiasco. Maybe he'll claim he didn't have enough money to do the plot justice. Maybe the cartoon tank near the end of the film was one way he saved some money.

I love the way you have these professional soldiers trying to kill alien creatures and their machine guns take about 30 seconds of continual fire to kill just one of them. Say! Here's an idea... get a bigger freakin' gun!

******Warning****** Do Not Watch This

[will5066 · 24 September 2011]

Half way thru this thing(I won't even call it a movie)I felt like setting my head on fire and putting it out with a fire axe. Watch this thing at your own peril. Seriously, This thing is just another piece of junk churned out by Syfy. I was hoping that David Hewlett and Robert Picardo would go on to do some better things than this, as I have enjoyed their characters on several series. They must be wanting to buy a new boat or put a new pool in their backyard. As this thing probably took a weekend to shoot, so it was a quick paycheck for them. We need to come up with a generic review we can just cut and paste on all these Syfy movies. That way we wouldn't waste time typing out what everybody already knows.

Typical SciFi Channel movie... not good... sometimes actually painful to watch.

[LAmitch · 2/10 · 27 September 2011]

I always find if fascinating to watch SciFi Channel (not SyFy) produced movies, and my fascination is the same each and every time. I always wonder how it can be that the SciFi Channel has produced so many good TV series, and yet their movies can't even be called B movies; they are usually D, D-, and epic FAIL movies.

Morlocks is no exception to this phenomenon. If there is nothing else on your DVR to watch, and there is no old rerun on TVland, no DVD in your collection that you haven't watched in the past 12 months, there's no Law & Order or NCIS playing on any channel, and you absolutely must waste two hours of your life watching bad television, then I guess this is your movie.

Morlocks did fool me because of David Hewlett and Robert Picardo; I thought with those two actors in the movie that this particular SciFi production might actually be watchable. I was wrong. The CGI FX are about standard for a SciFi Channel movie, which is to say not bad, but certainly not good.

The movie also suffers from a pet peeve of mine that seems to be in every SciFi Channel movie ever produced; the annoyance being people behaving in ways that no actual person ever would. For instance scene 1... it's night at some unknown location, and we see a group of military people in a camp. Some people are on guard duty, and some are making plans for whatever it is they're going to do next. Ranking / Planning guy in the tent hears unusual noises, growling, human screams, etc... He grabs his assault rifle and runs outside to see one of his buddies being eaten alive by a large unknown critter (Morlock). Ranking / planning guy (AKA: Dumbass) just stands there and watches his buddy being eaten, and then just screams at the top of his lungs. Morlocks then eat Dumbass. Dude, there's a rifle in your hands! Point and shoot! Didn't they teach you that in boot camp? And that's what I mean by behaving in ways that no real person would. If your buddy is being eaten by a thing, step 1 is shoot the thing, preferably in the head.

The movie might be fun if you watch it with friends and create a drinking game based on the stupidity of the characters, and the unlikeliness of the plot devices. Without too much creativity, you could be drunk in the first hour, which would make the second hour more entertaining and pass much more quickly than the first.

Morlocks Run Amok

[wes-connors · 2/10 · 29 December 2014]

In what looks like a war setting, an ugly special effects monster attacks and begins to eat a military man. His companions are also attacked, as they escape. After the opening credits, the setting switches to a book tour with David Hewlett (as James Radnor). He's written a book on time travel. Considered an expert on the subject, Mr. Radnor is summoned by the US Army to go on a mission into the future. The ugly special effects monsters are "Morlocks" from the future. They must be stopped. There are also some Marines lost in the future, who should not be left behind. Meanwhile, in the present, Robert Picardo (as Wichita) schemes...

With almost complete disregard for story-telling, this was adapted from H.G. Wells' classic "The Time Machine" (1895). The conflict between military man Robert Picardo (as Wichita) and DNA scientist Jim Fyfe (as Felix Watkins) is a small highlight. There are millions of people who'd love to make low-budget movies, and the Syfy Channel gets away with airing such wretched wastes of resources. Television anthologies from the 1950s and TV Movies of the Week from the 1960s were more consistently enjoyable. This one should have spent less time on special effects and more time letting us know what was happening in the story.

** Morlocks (9/24/11) Matt Codd ~ David Hewlett, Christina Cole, Robert Picardo, Jim Fyfe

again a bad SyFy flick

[trashgang · 3/10 · 14 October 2011]

If I say this is a SyFy flicks then geeks immediately should know that it will be trash. But it's funny that all people who hates SyFy flicks still watch their new ones again and again. The story is mostly okay and when it started I thought, hell yeah, this is going to be a really bloody flick. But after the opening credits the budget was gone I guess and they used some cheap CGI effects to create the 'morlocks'. The stupidest thing is the fact that most of the blood was also CGI. The acting was rather okay but I kept watching it just to see how bad the CGI was. When will SyFy finally spend some money on good CGI? I wasn't involved with the characters at all, do I need to say more? For me no Mor(e)locks.

bland B-movie

[SnoopyStyle · 3/10 · 3 February 2022]

The military has constructed a time machine looking to retrieve technology from the future. Instead, they are invaded by vicious creatures called the Morlocks.

It's a Syfy TV movie with a few familiar faces, TV-level CGI, non-descript industrial locations, and a passable connection to the H. G. Wells work. You get what you get. It's a bland B-movie.

A truly awful movie

[hectorcrawfish · 1/10 · 3 May 2013]

What a stinker of a movie. Should know by now anything with ex Stargate/Star trek actors is going to be a dud. Deleted from my PVR immediately after watching so my partner wouldn't get to see it. It's really only worth watching to see the really bad and obvious CGI. It is however a credit to the actors that they perform like professionals and soldier on through a woefully badly written script and criminally bad direction.

Its so flabbergastingly bad that its hard to come up with a decent review but others have said it all before. It could be part of a challenge in an endurance contest

So many great SciFi stories. So many bad SciFi movies

Why so many poor reviews???

[lhmorrison13 · 8/10 · 12 November 2018]

I'm truly surprised by how many bad reviews this movie has gotten. Believe me, I have seen far worse movies than this! TIME MACHINE: RISE OF THE MORLOCKS (aka MORLOCKS) is a very entertaining Sci Fi / Military movie with believable characters and a well scripted story. The main actors David Hewlett, Christina Cole and Daniel Caltagirone brought their characters to life and kept the movie on course from beginning to end.

Though not quite as polished and extravagant as a big budget Steven Spielberg or Ridley Scott movie, the acting, special effects, sets and location shots in MORLOCKS were quite impressive. Definitely worth watching . . .

Below-average Sci-Fi Channel creature feature

[kannibalcorpsegrinder · 6/10 · 3 December 2012]

After opening a wormhole into the future, a scientific research team and a military cover try to provide security against a swarm of ravenous creatures that have escaped from the future into the present time.

This one definitely has it's moments, namely from the fact that the creatures here are definitely quite vicious and generate some brutal kills for their part, leading to a lot of blood-splatter throughout. The showdown in the lab finale also generates some really intriguing action shootouts due to the overwhelming swarm of creatures appearing and the attempts to take them out, though there is some problems in the fact that there's a little too much CGI in here, as the creatures, bloodshed and various high-tech weaponry are all rather poorly animated and the quantity gets distracting. Also, the technobabble about time-travel and wormholes, with all that scientific jargon, gets confusing after awhile since it doesn't seem to provide any clues as to what's going on and doesn't really help the film out, though this is certainly far from the worst that they've provided.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Adult Language.

stupid

[sampah70 · 1/10 · 23 November 2021]

This movie is so stupid aliens from the future come back to destroy this stupid movie.

Sorry, this review is too short. It needs to contain at least 150 characters.

Out of copyright

[Leofwine_draca · 3/10 · 30 December 2021]

I guess the Wells novel of THE TIME MACHINE is out of copyright by now which means anyone can make versions of it, including SyFy channel. Not that this has much resemblance to the book. Instead it's about soldiers combating mutated monsters who come back to the present via a portal. The monsters are pretty bad CGI creations but the characters are even worse, thinner than cardboard, with only Robert Picardo's stock army bad guy offering any kind of depth.

The usual SyFy standard, i.e crap!

[Stevieboy666 · 3/10 · 13 April 2022]

Monstrous creatures called Morlocks from the future are brought to the present by an American military experiment involving time travel. As soon as I saw "SyFy" on the opening credits my hopes were dashed, having watched so many of their poor quality productions previously. Shot in Europe on the cheap the cast includes European actors playing Americans, but not always convincingly so, in particular the black guy called Tyrell who's natural British accent keeps slipping through his phoney American one. The Morlocks themselves are pretty hideous looking and the movie packs in plenty of blood, gore and violence but sadly the CGI effects, used not just for the creatures and gore but also for buildings and vehicles, are very poor. I was impressed by one shocking scene in which a woman wakes up in a room full of decaying corpses but overall the movie was crap.

Decent B-movie undone by major errors

[plinko2004 · 5/10 · 23 February 2014]

While none would claim "Morlocks" to be an award-worthy film, by Syfy's standards it was good until a few major mistakes ruined all that it had built up.

The title is somewhat misleading. It is not a remake of "The Time Machine"; it is more of a reimagining of the main concepts, even moreso than the Guy Pearce remake from 2002.

The plot: In 2012, a team of military scientists led by the overbearing, results-oriented Colonel Wichita (Robert Picardo) create a stable, functioning time machine. However, the first mission to the future goes disastrously wrong when the team of soldiers sent to the future find the world completely destroyed before being wiped out by mysterious humanoid creatures, losing the Latch - a small computer device used to control the time machine - in the process.

Dr. Radnor (David Hewlett), the former head of the project, is summoned back by current project head - and ex-wife - Angela (Christina Cole) at Wichita's order. After learning that his technology was completed by the remaining scientists, led by Angela and Dr. Felix Watkins (Jim Fyfe), Radnor is tasked with leading a team into the future to find, repair and return the Latch. As their quest gets underway, the mission is complicated by missing soldiers lost in the future, Angela's need of rescue, and looming threats of the creatures - the Morlocks - and Wichita's motives, which are far more personal than the hunt for future weaponry he claimed.

The good: Despite being far more generic than the original "Time Machine" story, the film tells a fairly decent story. By Syfy standards the acting is not bad; Hewlett and Picardo turn in solid performances while Jim Fyfe steals his scenes as the mad scientist Dr. Watkins. The main settings - a dreary futuristic army base and the ruins of the future - fit the film's mood.

The bad: The usual Syfy creature inconsistencies are present; the Morlocks change size and number repeatedly and their endurance changes based on the demands of the plot.

However, this film is undermined by a few fatal errors that create plot holes so large they undermine the entire movie.

When Radnor's team first learns of the Morlocks, the soldiers in the future inform them that they learned the name from newspapers they found. However, this undermines the later twist that the "future" is actually only 68 years later, as none of the soldiers ever mention such information despite it being readily available on the papers.

Even worse, the rules of time travel are completely broken. Wichita's motive is to obtain a cure from the future for his cancer-ridden son, which he finds in Morlock DNA. This sets up the twist that his son is actually the first Morlock and his transformation is the event that destroyed the future. However, the future exists before Wichita's son was transformed, which is impossible; the Morlock DNA had to be found for his son to transform, but said DNA didn't exist until he transformed and the future was destroyed.

Worthy of H.G. Wells

[dianerpessler-46164 · 10/10 · 5 August 2015]

A spectacular science fiction adventure based upon the classic characters and premise of esteemed author H.G. Wells. Talented director Matt Codd has managed to do some wondrous things with a limited budget and the production values in this motion picture are stunning. The special effects, set design, and creatures are breathtaking. A completely original and creatively unique elaboration of The Time Machine, this is a story of the Morlocks invading our time through a breach the fabric of time itself. An exciting idea beautifully realized by director Codd and full of excitement, thrills, and haunting imagery. A gifted cast give superb performances and really bring their fascinating characters to life. A tremendous cinematic accomplishment.