HOWYOULOW
Sloppy, clueless and conceptually poor, ‘Screamers’ embodies
everything that good sci-fi is not.
As film genres go, science fiction has done a tremendous amount
of growing up in the last 15 years. There is a standard of
sophistication among writers and fans in sci-fi like never before.
Clearly, the speediness with which we enter the Information Age has
made it imperative that more real science go into the fiction
(compare the original "Star Trek" to the "The Next Generation," for
an example).
Unfortunately, "Screamers" has chosen to ignore the last decade
and a half of progress. Where story and concepts are involved, this
film belongs more in the bionic ’70s than the present.
Based on a short story by Phillip Dick (from whose work came
"Blade Runner," a film that set new standards for the genre), the
film bears only a minor resemblance to the cerebral writer’s text.
Its more immediate ancestors are John Carpenter’s "The Thing," and
both James Cameron’s "Aliens" and "Terminator" films. "Screamers"
wants desperately to be like these films, but the filmmakers are
clueless about crafting a sci-fi classic, and like the titular
robots, are only able to mimic one.
A written scroll of a prologue with voiceover (are we, as a
culture, reaching such a state of illiteracy that this new trend of
having the prologue read to us is really needed?), fills us in on
the happenings in the year 2078. A bitter war on mining planet
Sirius 6B rages on between the miners and the corporate types, who
think little of endangering their workers by exposing them to
harmful Berynium radiation (a la "Total Recall," another Dick
adaptation).
The commander of the rebelling workers, played by Peter Weller,
receives a distressing bit of information with repercussions
affecting the war and everyone on the planet (this plot twist is
pure Dick, and the intelligence of it sticks out like a sore thumb
in this movie). He sets out to confer with the enemy and has his
every step dogged by the Screamers, compact machines that burrow
underground and tear into you like the flying pinball in
"Phantasm." The Screamers were created by the workers as a defense
against the corporate forces, and they even have the ability to
reproduce themselves and improve their design with each generation.
By mid-story, it is revealed that the newest generation of Screamer
can easily pass for human.
How these crudely fashioned machines can achieve evolution so
quickly and so dramatically is never explained. It is as much a
mystery to the filmmakers as to any sharp-witted individual
watching this sloppy piece of tripe. Jennifer Rubin and a band of
patently irritating survivors from both sides of the conflict join
Weller as they assess the situation and battle the machines gone
amok.
Weller, who has been a joy to watch in recent films like "Naked
Lunch" and "The New Age" reminds us that he is all too capable of
picking bad material (anyone else remember "Leviathan?").
Condolences also go out to Jennifer Rubin, who never gets a chance
to put her on-screen charisma to good use.
Because of the highly imaginative nature of the genre, bad
sci-fi is an exquisitely painful thing. When the ideas are
nonexistent or stolen from superior films, all that is left is a
reminder of the genre’s hokey origins before films like "2001" or
"Alien" showed how artful films about the future can be.
Since the team behind "Screamers" also made the laughable
"Stargate," it’s doubtful that they’ll take sci-fi to new heights
with this film or any other. One thing is certain: The real
Screamers will be the people leaving the theaters.
Jennifer Rubin
Photo illustration by GARETH SMITH/Daily BruinComments to
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