★★
“Cheap TVM offers up its secrets before you even see it. Take them.”
Do not read the sleeve before watching this; idiotically, it gives away the whole thing, including stuff revealed in the last ten minutes. Also: yes, it is the Rick Springfield: Jesse’s Girl, Human Touch, and…er, that’s about it, in the most unexpected reappearance of an 80’s pop icon since a bloke from Bros turned up in Blade II. With these issues out of the way, the movie itself is set in the future, after six years of a war has led to stalemate. Agatha Doyle (Ferrell) leads a Dirty Dozen-ish group of criminal soldiers with nothing to lose on a mission to capture an enemy base. That part’s easy, as there’s no-one around – except for a pile of corpses. However, while they wait for reinforcements, someone/thing starts ripping our her troops’ throats.
Y’know, I always thought “legion” meant more than one. Not in this, which looks as if it were made for the Sci-Fi channel; just the one enemy, and most of the time all you see is his POV, looking like that of the raptors in Pitch Black. There’s much wandering around corridors, as numbers get whittled down to the inevitable survivors (identities also given away by the sleeve). It’s a minor shame, as the team are an amusing bunch of cliches, led by Corey Feldman as a computer hacker; the doctor (Audie England) was also entertaining, with loony lines such as, “The Angel of Death is my superior officer.” Otherwise, this gets less entertaining as it goes on, and while Farrell makes a good first impression, she’s swiftly reduced to bickering with her (steadily declining) force. On the whole, best cancel my first statement in this review: read the sleeve, and save yourself 95 minutes.
Dir: Jon Hess
Star: Terry Farrell, Parker Stevenson, Corey Feldman, Rick Springfield