After promisingly favorable beginnings, David Morlet's Mutants somehow manages to run out of gas along a patch of well-traveled road; sputtering to a customary genre finish, and earning the dubious distinction of being the first of the French New Wave of horror films that I've checked out that really didn't grab me at all.I've been pretty vocal lately about just how fucking clapped out I am with the whole overly recycled zombie/infected subgenre-crutch these days, and unless somebody's biding their time in unveiling a brilliant and original take on said subject matter, I vote for laying them to rest for a few years or more, already.I never thought I'd see the day when I'd grown totally weary of pasty-faced corpses with wicked custom contacts and horrible prosthetic dentures biting hapless idiots in the throat, but we've passed that historic day by about a month at this point.France, no reprievesies for you either.Don't get me wrong, Morlet utilizes his camera to full effect, building loads of creepy winter atmosphere at the outset of tonight's entry, but by the time his more-than-a-little Descent(2005)-ish beasties snag themselves some camera time, it's mostly the same mundane survival horror we've been force-fed for the past decade or better now.Couple that with the film's mendicancy for fake-looking computer generated splatter, and you've got l'horreur médiocre pour des débutants as a result.You might be on the other end, reading this, and dismissing my words as disharmonious analysis from a benumbed, sleep-deprived cine-snob, but you'd be wrong... and you'd probably be one of those cat/kittens who wrongfully groove on otiose fecal matter like Chud II:Bud the Chud(1989), too, wouldn't ya.
Pulverized by an ambulance into cgi roadkill.Oh laboured irony.
As the French countryside is immersed in winter climes, so is it also besieged by an unknown virus-borne mutant holocaust, from which two scientists, Marco (Francis Renaud) and his expectant lover, Sonia (Hélène de Fougerolles), speed towards the safety an army base on a snowy mountain road in an ambulance with a black female soldier named Perez (Marie-Sohna Conde) and an infected patient as passengers.After a power struggle results in a dead black female soldier with a bullethole in her face-piece, a dead infected patient, a nearly empty gas tank, and an infected Marco with painful hot lead in his labonza, Sonia is forced to transport the dying father of her unborn child to the NOAH base, where the cure is being developed, her damned self.She seeks refuge in a huge abandoned facility nestled in the elevations, where she can remove the bullet from Marco's belly, assess their situation, and perhaps, catch a breather, if she's lucky...She's not lucky.Marco's condition progressively worsens as he's helplessly morphed into a homicidal mutant with rodent-like features, bald pate, and an extra set of nostrils.Hey, what the hell, air is free, right?Sonia realizes her lover's time is borrowed, and as he degenerates further, she must come to terms with the sobering truth that she's going to have to kill him sooner or later, or he'll be instinctively forced to do her, instead.As his hair and teeth fall out, he grows increasingly more aggro towards her, until, in lieu of the lethal injection she's unable to bring herself to administer to him as he pleads for death over mutation(le poulet du jaune!), she locks him up in a cage in the basement as a consolation prize after a transfusion of her immune blood proves less than successful.
"He looks in my mouth and then he starts to glooooaaat.He says my teeth are O.K., but my gums got to gooooo."
Soon afterwards, she's gunbutted in the mush by Franck(Nicolas Briançon), an opportunistic survivalist, who, with his girlfriend, an incapacitated bitten guy, and a creepy, silent machete-wielding chromedome along for the ride, intercepts the desperate woman's emergency radio broadcasts, demanding the keys to the ambulance outside and medical treatment for his gnawed-upon chum, who relates to her,"The cannibals attacked, and we ran like faggots."Hey, at least he's honest.The muted baldie notices the teeth marks in her lower back, and figuring her to be infected, attacks her.She explains her immunity, and together, they sneak off to his former hiding place with the working radio, and while he fends off drooling mutants with his machete, she gets the message out over the airwaves, but not before the mutants do her French bastard assistant in.Just when your head is about to fall back against the chair in nap position(for about the fifth time), the mutants come pouring out of the forest en masse and descend upon the compound, eating all of the demanding intruders with much cgi blood-based alacrity.When one of the mutants looks to dine upon the scientist, she's momentarily spared by her former boyfriend-turned-rat-lookin'-sumbitch, who battles the rival mutant and kills him.She manages to escape through a vent to the barbed wire fence-enclosed yard outside, but the rodential Marco soon follows suit.He sniffs the overwrought woman like an animal, but when he shows a propensity for gnawing at her pregnant belly, she's forced to knock him into a pile of barbed wire, where he gets hopelessly snagged.Finally, she's able to bring herself to brain the fucker with a section of pipe, causing a shower of cgi blood to bring the unspectacular, derivative thing to a close, as the NOAH base helicopter turns the rest of the mutants outside the fence into hamburger with automatic weapon fire.Credits, s'il te plait...
And the 2011 winner for Best English Subtitle goes to...
As I said earlier, the cinematography is impressive, as is the director's use of color and mood, and the soundtrack mixing ambient music and rock stabs isn't at all garbage, either.Performances by de Fougerolles, Renaud, and Briançon are all pretty solid, as well.I only wish I hadn't seen twenty-five movies almost exactly like it beforehand.It doesn't take a film major to see Morlet's obvious love for all things Danny Boyle/Neil Marshall.The pacing slows to a crawl mid-movie to establish the 'love n' hope in the face of difficulty and danger' angle(yaaaaaawn), and though it perks up quite a bit in the final reel, it's too fucking late by then.I can't consciously add Morlet's name to the list of French heavy-hitters until he crafts a better flick.On the scale, Mutants transforms into a mediocre two wops; nothing special to see here.
Ooh, looky, more cgi.Right click.Scroll down.Delete.
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