hyped garbage

Good start, but then it gets ruined

Fresh and Exciting

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

On a distant mining planet ravaged by a decade of war, scientists have created the perfect weapon: a blade-wielding, self-replicating race of killing devices known as Screamers designed for one purpose only -- to hunt down and destroy all enemy life forms.This is a film that should be successful. Start with producer Antony I. Ginnane, who had great genre films dating back to Patrick" and "Strange Behavior". Add a story by Philip K. Dick, which was turned into a screenplay by Dan O'Bannon. Add on great actors like Peter Weller and Jennifer Rubin. Heck, even add the Chiodo brothers for special effects. How can this fail? And yet it does. Visually, it just looks a mess. The opening narration is off-putting. The cinematography is sloppy (though this may be because of the CGI and not the fault of the camera). This is the sort of film that would benefit from a remake, but there is always the fear they would botch it again.

This is a mediocre film... I would normally give it a 5/10 but I give it 1 extra star for the ending that leaves you thinking. The budget is clearly low, and the sci-fi nature of the film suffers as a result. The plot is pretty cool, but the film constantly violates the laws of physics and just overall looks pretty cheesy. Towards the end, the plot is interesting and good enough for me to watch. I was entertained by the film but wouldn't watch it again. The mini-nukes look like a lot of fun! The military component of the film was terrible.... 2080 something and they have giant, cumbersome shotguns that hold only a few rounds.The character development isn't that bad, but the dialogue is kind of predictable. The movie does keep you guessing a little bit as to the next design of the robot, but I think everyone can predict that the final form is a human being. This film would have been better suited as an 80s film.There are some parts of the movie that deny common sense, such as when the commander guy looks at the screamer's programming files: He sees that the chip from the type he killed says it is "type 3", so he concludes that there are only 3 types of the robot. First of all, there could be 20 types and he only got a "type 3" by coincidence, and this also neglects the fact that there is the original design (the one that digs around in the sand).

The story is about a war on a mining colony between two rivaling human factions. One of the factions has developed a new weapon: an army of robotic drones, nicknamed 'screamers', that hide underground and attack anything that they don't recognize. However, as the war is starting to draw to a close, the screamers refuse to work for the human faction that created them and it soon becomes clear that they have evolved on their own and now pose a threat to both sides.It's a neat idea and there are a lot of twists along the way, albeit very predictable ones. The writing could have taken a little more effort, the characters are shallow and the dialogue is very cheesy.The acting is also not that fantastic. Neither is the direction. It's all very average.Screamers is entertaining, but it doesn't stand out like other PKD adaptations such as Bladerunner or Minority Report. If you are looking for a fun sci-fi action flick, you might consider checking this one out, but if you are looking for depth then you're looking in the wrong place.

It's hard for filmmakers to adapt stories to the screen, especially when they resemble stories that have been previously told. Turns out though director Christian Duguay evens out the story and though it still recalls other movies before its time, it still has elements in it that make it have a quality worth watching.The story of Screamers is loosely based off of Second Variety, a short story written by Philip K. Dick, the novelist of Blade Runner (1982) and Total Recall (1990). Dick is a very prestigious science fiction writer. His work has multiple twists and it always was a pleasant read. I also read Second Variety and much of it was fairly close to this movie. I actually enjoyed the film adaptation more than the story itself.Peter Weller is Joseph A. Hendricksson, an eccentric commander of an alliance bunker located on a planet known as Sirius 6B. Years before on Earth, there was nuclear fallout between two major groups; the N.E.B. (New Economic Block) and alliance workers over a special mineral that could change energy usage for transportation. So the fighting was moved to Sirius 6B where there has been a "Cold War" ever since. For the alliance to defend themselves, they created the Autonomous Mobile Sword or better known as, the screamer. The screamer is a mechanical life form that was equipped with a razor sharp blade so it could kill its enemy. But like all man made robots, they become self-aware and are now deciding for themselves who they should kill. Strangely enough, they are always updating their software, even making screamers that look like humans. So from there, audiences might make the connection of these traits between Skynet from The Terminator (1984), and characters not knowing who's real and who isn't from the novel Who Goes There, by John W. Campbell Jr.But for those few relations, Screamers can hold it's own as an entertaining sci-fi horror movie. It does not contain a lot of blood but it can be very suspenseful. Weller's performances are always a welcome to the screen. His ability to make his character sarcastic as is serious is a great touch. Andrew Lauer plays a innocent rookie named Ace Jefferson who tags along Hendricksson to meet with the N.E.B. command. The N.E.B. group these two visit is lead by the lovely Jennifer Ruben as Jessica Hanson. And with her is Roy Dupuis, who looks like Matthew McConaughey's distant cousin, who likes bugging another soldier who has some serious patience issues. The special effects are definitely dated. And it's really obvious when the camera is focused on the screamer itself but hey, the creature looks cool enough to look at. I think the most baffling part is how the machine keep upgrading their models. It makes you wonder, "What's going on down there". The set design is also something to see. A lot of does have the same color like from the movie Soldier (1998) but it at least looks real. The backgrounds actually resemble Chernobyl; which is eerie. Normand Corbeil composed the soundtrack and it also another strong point. When Hedricksson runs into a homeless child, the music makes the scene so heartbreaking. It's emotional and soft on the ears.The film variation of Second Variety does borough ideas from previous movies, but it's put together in such a way that it won't matter to the audience. The music is good and so is Weller's performance as a tired out war veteran.