The Worst Film Ever

The Age of Commercialism

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Blistering performances.

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.

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.

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.

"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.