Theme: Horror

I Am Legend (2007) – Will Smith and Alice Braga

With a load of medical propaganda coming from news reporters in the opening scenes, this movie couldn’t have got off to much of a worse start, so far as anyone with a brain and a heart is concerned. The action movie itself really begins around 3 minutes in.

By 15 minutes in it’s clear the movie is going hard down the pandemic route, even promoting the concept of military martial law with housebound lockdowns, military endorced quarantines with separation of family members, ritual hand sanitising upon entering rooms, and of course plenty of needles in arms — including experimental cures.

Before the end of the first half hour, it swings firmly into the horror genre. Fast forward for 5 minutes if you’re not into that kind of thing — and who in their right mind would be.

Before the end of the first hour, there’s another 5 minute horror episode to enjoy. Maybe this kind of shock & scare tactic is all part of the “don’t question the medicine” hypnosis.

Before the 90 minute mark we get yet another episode of horror, and this time it lasts pretty much till the end. As such, I’m going to rate this movie Barely Watchable overall, even though it has some high quality patches.

The Mummy (2017) – Tom Cruise, Annabelle Wallis, Sofia Boutella and Russell Crowe

This is primarily a historical / sci-fi thriller movie, with good action, but it also verges on borderline horror, with zombies etc — similar to Blade in this regard; and like Blade, it just about qualifies for listing on this site due to its good action content and being not so unbearably horror.

The action and general production here is of a good standard, but the horror factor is a bit unpleasant to say the least. In a way it’s barely watchable, but I’m going to rate it Above Average in the end.

Tom, Annabelle, Sofia and Russell all deliver strong performances in this movie, as expected.

Abduction (2019) – Scott Adkins and Andy On

Abduction (2019)

This movie is a strange mix between fast action and vibes of dispair. It takes about half an hour to really warm up, with a strong backstory already built, but it stays a bit confusing right the way through the movie.

By the start of the second hour, the three main protagonists are now somewhat introduced and are working together in a team to track down their loved ones – to rescue them from the aliens who have abducted them. This is probably the highlight of the movie, in terms of mood. But it doesn’t take long till they’re all captured and things become quite depressing right through till the end of the movie – that’s quite a missed opportunity to have a lot more fun, and it brings this movie down from what looked set for a very high rating, down to just Decent which is still no mean feat.

Andy On was impressive, as one of two roughly equal co-stars, called Connor, with vibes similar to Jet Li, just a bit less intense. He was able to match Scott Adkins (who played Quinn – the other co-star) in terms of charisma and screen combat capability, while coming from such a different culture – they made a quite good team.

The lead female – Adkins’ psychiatrist – was played quite well by Vietnamese actress Trương Ngọc Ánh. The second main female – Connor’s kidnapped wife – was played adequately by Lily Ji.

The best bit about this movie is arguably the very ending – it’s got a cool bit of mysterious music at the end, blended in very well with the final scene. It’s not an adrenaline-rush tune, but it’s quite spiritually stirring nevertheless.

This movie is also abundant with metaphors that coincide significantly with theories that became popular around world events that followed this movie’s release in 2019. It’s as if someone were trying to get a message out, but had no permission or trick to do so any more explicitly than were done here. Of course this is pure conjecture, but it kind of makes me respect Scott Adkins a bit more than I previously did. Maybe it’s misplaced credit, who knows. And by the same token, maybe we should respect the weird Wachowskis too, since even though they seem to be much deeper ‘in the club’, and even though they seemed to have the full backing of the system to do so, they basically promoted the same kind of metaphors via The Matrix, and somewhat in Jupiter Ascending too.

Cyborg (1989) – Jean-Claude Van Damme

Cyborg is a Mad Max style post-apocalyptic action drama starring a young Jean-Claude Van Damme just one year after his breakout movie Bloodsport.

Due to the amount of pain & suffering depicted, including plenty of murder & torture, this movie could qualify as borderline horror. The most gruesome shots are omitted but there’s still enough unpleasantry to warrant a bit of fast-forwarding.

Van Damme plays a ‘slinger’ called Gibson who helps get people out of a ruined New York City. He stumbles across a female cyborg (a robotics-enhanced human, like Robocop without the strength & weaponry) played adequately by Dayle Haddon. She needs help getting to Atlanta to deliver vital information to doctors so they can make a cure for the plague that’s ravaged the world.

He also stumbles across another female, played terribly callously & nonchalently by Deborah Richter, with an outwardly-confident nervous twitch, not dissimilar to the demeanour of an adult industry worker – no surprise therefore that she has multiple scenes of nudity here. She tags along with Van Damme’s character because she’s otherwise quite helpless in this scary wasted world, plus she’s trying to convince him to help the cyborg deliver the cure to Atlanta.

Along the way, Van Damme’s character Gibson faces a ruthless gang of pirates led by a guy called Fender (played very convincingly by Vincent Klyn) who rejoices in misery and wants to own the cure for himself. The same guy also murdered Gibson’s family, so Gibson has a vendetta to fulfil.

Due to its originality and its frequent action, with a fair bit of quality, while being let down by plenty of slow scenes with empty filler content that ought to have been condensed out, and due to the overwhelming amount of horror genre infesting this movie, I rate it So-So / Lower-OK from a smooth action hero movie fan’s perspective. It’s more than Watchable, but only just.

Fun fact: this movie was put together using the sets & costumes of the abandoned Masters Of The Universe 2 plus an abandoned Spider-Man movie. Due to budget issues, those movies were scrapped even though a lot of money had already been spent on them, so they made this movie Cyborg to put those sets & costumes to good use and it turned out to be quite a hit – well played Cannon!

Blade (1998) – Wesley Snipes

Blade (1998) starring Wesley Snipes

Although this movie was not made by Marvel Studios and is not considered part of the modern Marvel Cinematic Universe, the character Blade still originated from Marvel Comics and did eventually appear in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a character in the 2024 movie Deadpool & Wolverine.

Wesley Snipes is a top-tier action movie hero when given the right movie to work on, as we saw earlier in his career with Demolition Man and Passenger 57; and this movie brings out the best of him. Undoubtedly inspiring the Matrix to some degree, which came out the year after, with agents instead of vampires dodging bullets, and a larger team instead of a single man against them. Wesley Snipes has less of a cool ‘hacker’ feel than Keanu Reeves, but more of a convincing martial artist vibe about him, so this movie is very close to the level of the Matrix in terms of acting performance and convincing execution of plot. Wesley Snipes makes a very convincing animalistic/vampiric human being – his moves are sharp and slick, helped very much by great camerawork but also largely thanks to Wesley’s real life martial arts background and his general on-point demeanour.

It’s a very combat oriented theme, with fists and blades and guns from start to finish. Adrenaline is pumping intermittently throughout. Cast wise, we have the odd strong character and a few less strong – this movie could easily benefit from an additional very strong cast member if the plot would allow.

Blade is a rare example of a ‘vampire horror’ that appeals to people who prefer non-gritty, fast-paced, martial-arts-packed action movies that thrill rather than scare. I don’t personally enjoy horror movies, but this one’s just about bearable as it’s more of an action thriller than anything, however, it becomes a bit more sickly when you realise how closely it resembles what really goes on in this world.

Like The Matrix, Blade also has a couple of sequels, which is inevitable considering how strong the original movie was; and like The Matrix, Blade’s sequels are not quite as good as the original but are still worth watching sequentially.