Helix (I) (2015) User Reviews

coulda, woulda, shoulda been better

[lioninoil · 5/10 · 3 July 2016]

Good performances (with one exception*, noted below), good story, good staging, good photography, and good dialogue (again with one exception*, noted below), this could have been a 7/10 or 8/10 movie but for that one exception: *Marc Petey (as Aiden Magnusson) and his (lack) of dialogue.

It would be reasonable (I think) to expect Eric Petey to write some decent dialogue for Marc, and get him to deliver, but no. He mostly has none, and what he does have is mostly unremarkable. It's a shame, because that single performance (by the main character) drags down the entire movie.

The system doesn't lie

[nogodnomasters · 4/10 · 25 September 2017]

The film takes place sometime in the near future. Technology has advanced and so has global warming, so much that it has devastated the city of Vancouver, now walled off into sectors. Aiden Magnusson (Mark Petey) a contractor cop from sector 2 apprehends a criminal and is now a quiet hero being promoted to sector 1.

Crimes are solved using DNA. They can spray a home and find out who was there from DNA traces. Everyone has their DNA on file since birth. Aiden detects there is something wrong with the system and causes issues.

The film moved slow. Action scenes lacked action. Mark Petey has no stage presence. They needed a real "hero" for that role, someone who could really fight. Eric Petey wrote and directed the film and by casting what I suspect is his brother into the lead, he killed his project.

Guide: f-word. Nudity (Lara Doucette, Mark Petey)

Bit of a mess where I think a good film was trying to come out....and failed

[t-dooley-69-386916 · 3/10 · 25 July 2016]

This is set in the future where global warming has caused the seas to rise or something and in Canada the 'haves' now live in a fab city surrounded by a wall which keeps the 'have nots', riff raff out. Aaron is a 'second sector' cop who gets promoted to the city and real cop work. The whole of the city is run on a helix system of intel which solves crimes as fast as they are committed.

Aaron discovers that the system is not what it seems and then he gets framed for a crime he did not commit etc, etc.

Now there are some very good ideas here and the acting is OK to terrible. The sound levels vary and the direction is at best patchy. The sets are actually not too bad and the CGI is mostly very good, so what is the real problem? Well it just does not hang together, there is next to no chemistry for the 'love interest' and the plot is a bit all over the place and I am sure there is either been an editing mistake or there have been scenes cut. This has received a lot of panning and most of it is justified but this is far from being a terrible film it is just not a very good one – if in doubt go for an inexpensive rental or streaming option as you will not be wanting to see this twice.

Save yourself the pain

[tinatspoon · 1/10 · 3 June 2016]

I like bad films. Films that are 'so bad it's good', but this? It's just bad. So awful that I stopped watching after 25 minutes and I can't remember ever doing that before. The acting is wooden, which I can overlook in films because they're entertainingly bad and have redeeming features, but this was just painful to watch. The main character is uninteresting, there are too many irrelevant characters and interactions, and it seems in this futuristic vision everyone is an *sshole. For a city sector that is crumbling the pavements are surprisingly clean, but this film is a mess. The UK DVD cover looks like it should be an action movie, the synopsis read like it had potential, so for £3 in ASDA I took a chance on it but it's going straight to the charity shop.

Anything is better than spending time watching this!

[millis-57092 · 1/10 · 24 May 2016]

This is truly an appalling movie: there is nothing to recommend or redeem it in the slightest. The acting is so wooden it makes Pinocchio look like an Oscar- winning character actor, the plot is so confusing that you don't know what the main character is doing, or why, and even understand how it ends and the scenes are basic to say the least. It's set in a future where a presumably dangerous city (devoid of any transport) is policed by unarmed cops, and all the criminals are equally unarmed. Characters appear and disappear throughout the 98 mins of cinematic torture without rhyme nor reason: distinctive clothing or characteristics make no difference to whether they stay or not and if they make any impact on the story. I've no idea how anyone can score it anything better than awful: it's certainly the worst movie I've actually sit through as opposed to walking out before the end, though I should have done to save my time.

Everybodys always angry but why????

[hobbitsis · 1/10 · 19 July 2016]

is it a spoiler to say that almost every character in this movies is just way too angry or was that just me?. character depth... the movie doesn't explain why either. is that just suppose to be how society evolved?

the beginning dialog is pretty weak. redo/add a few parts and this could actually be a decent movie... the characters say very little useful info if anything at all. congrats you made cops look really unintelligent and corrupt?

the beginning has lots of questions most don't get answered.. in the middle people start dying and the magic computer solves all the murders... at the end, the main character comes back after running away but then says he's not staying LOL.. oh and we never find out who's killing people and why. there were 2 scenes with some sonic pulse gun but i guess they don't give them to all the cops, or maybe it's just Wednesday's that they get them (there and gone - without a trace). IDK pretty weak probably should have changed those 2 scenes to mesh with the rest of the movie (knives only maybe? technology?).

i can't imagine this type of movie being easy to make without lots of money so props for that! the actors and actresses looked like they did the best they could with the weak-sauce lines they were fed (beginning was kinda rough). probably the main thing i didn't like was how as new characters were introduced each demonstrated 1 kind of personality(inpatient, bad at their job, and angry). there's just so many unanswered questions. The story is a little Skippy with a few pointless encounters. who was the bad guy? the story line needed just a little more thought or something to make it all fit/flow together..

pretty much only managed to watch the whole thing because of the cute Asian(Elfina Luk). she should be in all the movies, seriously why isn't she? tell me now...

Typical kind of indie

[Leofwine_draca · 2/10 · 8 November 2018]

HELIX is a Canadian indie science fiction flick that seems to get its inspiration from many Hollywood flicks past and present, MINORITY REPORT being one of them. It's a slow moving and talky affair, as are so many indies, in which an ordinary guy's life spirals out of control when he gets framed for murder by a governmental computer. It's all chit-chat between actors making little effort with a few CGI backgrounds thrown in.

The ideas were there, but it didn't quite land

[icocleric · 4/10 · 2 January 2024]

I think there were some good ideas here, but it didn't quite deliver. But I think if the editing and the pacing was better it could have been a good film. I thought some of the post apocalypse scenes did look really nice though.

There's no chemistry between the lead and his love interest that it feels the romance comes from no where. The acting was very mixed. Overall there was little character development, because I think a lot was put into the setting off the future, and the DNA system they had. Which was cool, but a better balance between the two was needed.

So I think they tried to do too much.

Pretty good show

[dbennington-45720 · 10/10 · 31 December 2017]

Just like most shows if you read the comments below where people stopped after 30 minutes or 1 episode that's dumb. Like everyone else I love game of thrones but even that takes a few episodes to get interesting. This show was no different. After about 2 episodes it picks up. It also has some good plot twists and isn't entirely predictable.

Near future reality?

[john-shannon-903-426510 · 8/10 · 9 January 2021]

There are a lot of bad reviews for this movie.

It wasn't that bad.

Sure it's disjointed, not enough background detail on the protagonists, but it kinda works.

It's spiced with a bit of romance, and it has a happy ending.