Eric Stevenson
A mockbuster is a film that is clearly a ripoff of another film. I really do wonder why the creators don't just sue the people who ripped them off. There have been much more frivolous lawsuits. "The Amazing World Of Gumball" did an hilarious parody of "Miracle Star". Anyway, this movie really does make the Transformers films look good. At least those had fairly good special effects.The special effects are as horrible as expected, especially with how they show the robots killing people with lasers. It's just these blue streams that leave holes in their heads. I remember near the end how they say that there are other survivors, but the budget is obviously too low to hire enough people to show them. At one point, someone says that the robots have destroyed most of the world and we just cut to a regular looking sky. Some destruction. The acting is truly horrible.I barely remember the first one, but this is actually a prequel. If there's such a massive invasion, why do we only see two or three robots at one time? Because the budget couldn't afford to put more in! This has so little effort put into it, it seems like it's doubtful to even call it a movie at all. It's mostly just people walking around. It doesn't even have two minutes of good action scenes like the Nostalgia Critic foresaw in "The Last Knight". 1/2*
ismellfish
Saw this on Netflix late one night and decided to give it a whirl to see how bad it could be, and I wasn't disappointed. I can forgive movies made on shoestring budgets (Check out Clerks or El Mariachi) but the makers of this movie are not only untalented, they are creative looters: take a popular movie, rip it off, and give it a similar title. The reasons this movie are bad have been given in the other reviews: atrocious dialogue, bad acting, extreme lapses in logic and continuity, etc. Check these out: 1. The satellite man "transmorphs" then is only seen once again. And when you do, he drops from the sky in one of those "Matrixy" poses.2. When the Nissan SUV (with the logo covered with black tape) spits out the dead driver, don't park it next to the crime scene for the next shot-check the license plate number, it's right there.3. The title card describes an "Airforce" base. Sorry, folks, it's Air Force-2 words.4. As the two government people drive the "doctor" in the Suburban, they go through a checkpoint, apparently into the "Airforce" base, then drive past the same checkpoint numerous times during their conversation.5. Our hero fires not only his assault rifle, but his grenade launcher while sitting in the back seat of a pickup truck that has no roll-down back windows. And there is no brass ejected.6. Our hero is known by the government agents as an expert in UAV operation. How they know that is unexplained, but no matter, the subject is never brought up again.7. When the first robot attacks the Airforce base (which has no Air Force personnel), it is shown walking and shooting, and they use the same shot over and over and over and over again.There is a place for low budget movies, such as the ones mentioned above, but at least put some effort into making a coherent script and story. Don't make a shallow ripoff.
Darthbrandon14
My gosh my gosh my gosh. SO bad, it makes Twilight seem perfect. (And I didn't "Hate" Twilight. I thought it was OK, but had many many flaws) I wanted to believe that it was even a little better then the utter atrocity that was the Transmorphers. I was slightly right, BUT THE BOTH SUCK! Hard. the acting is slightly better, but everyone still over acts or under acts! But everything else, a rip off of terminator, Transformers 1 and 2, and The Matrix! I mean, the ripped transformers right down to Megatron, and I swear they actually said Megatron.Final word, the film sucked, they both suck, don't watch it, because you won't ever get you're 90 minutes back.1 out of 10 stars, wish I could rate it lower.*'''''''''
paul-3555
I know what to expect from Asylum - dreadful nonsense that trades off current cinematic trends. But with this one, I almost dared to hope that they might have put some effort in.The first 30 minutes or so are almost acceptable - the build-up is slow and disjointed, but most of the over-acting is kept to a minimum, and some of the effects actually look as though somebody actually tried to produce something worthy. Some effects sequences are actually fairly effective - though many others are awful. Unfortunately, whatever small amount of promise may have existed early on, it all falls apart after 30 minutes, with really poor dialogue, laughable acting, lame plotting, and some terrible visual effects.It does have some unintentional comedy value, as you might expect - much of the dialogue is staggeringly bad. At one point, a woman tells our heroes that she investigates "unexplained events of the terrestrial nature". That is a direct quote. One minor character asks her how aliens differ from extraterrestrials - quite why anybody would ask such a stupid question is unexplained, but her answer is absolutely mind-boggling. She explains that extraterrestrials attack like a friend, whereas aliens attack like enemies. I challenge anyone to find a more stupid piece of dialogue in any science fiction movie of the past ten years. It's hard to imagine anything more utterly devoid of meaning or sense.It's a shame, because if this film shows anything, it's that Asylum probably have the resources to produce some decent films if they wanted to. But first, they would need to employ someone who has good ideas, and is capable of translating them into a movie that follows the long-established conventions of storytelling. This film throws out the rulebook in favour of cobbling together events and characters in seemingly random order. They also need talented script writers, or at least skilled script editors.In summary, I could live with the constraints of a poor budget, if it told a good story. Many great sci-fi stories have been told on a very limited budget - but this really is useless, and I suspect the reason is that very few people at Asylum could care less what anybody thinks, as long as they make a few dollars profit on each tiresome knock-off.One plus point - it's better than the first Transmorphers film.