I, Go-Bot [Review: Transmorphers]

This is why I love The Asylum!

You may be surprised to hear that Transmorphers has nothing to do with the Transformers movie at all, taking its cue instead from The Matrix: Revolutions and the Terminator films. Following Earth's complete subjugation by an army of robots - possibly of alien origin - the last humans cower in an underground city, hatch their plans to take back the planet, and generally argue, bitch and catfight.

These robots don't actually transform into mechanical disguises, with a couple of exceptions (and incidentally, did the scriptwriters never see Tom Hanks in Big? Turns out he was right about something) but they do morph between flying, walking and heavy weapons configurations.

General Van Ryburg (Eliza Swenson) has a cunning plan - but naturally it's doomed to failure unless Mitchell (Matthew Wolf) - a revolutionary placed in suspended animation by Van Ryburg - is thawed out to lead the squadron. Complicating matters is Mitchell's former girlfriend Nadir (Amy Weber) who is now married to the General. The General was originally written for a man, and Eliza Swenson has been switched into the part with no changes to the plot or script - creating an interesting dynamic between the lead characters, plus a society that no longer bats an eyelid at either gender roles or sexuality - Captain Jack Harkness would fit right in.

Eliza Swenson as General Van Ryburg

Of all the Asylum movies I've sat through, this one probably has the highest production values - in that it has actual sets, many of which don't resemble painted cardboard. There are also a lot of giant robots, although sadly CGI and bluescreen footage are both overused and poorly executed. By contrast the acting, while not devoid of ham and cheese, is generally good - certainly the best thing about the movie. In addition to the leads, Matthew Tower stands out as the loopy Professor Alextzavich, and his sidekick Suzy the supercharged cyborg (Erin Evans, aka Erin Sullivan, half of the reason I enjoyed Monster so much) is woefully underutilised.

Drop the camera and run - again

A creature attacks the metropolis, survivors go on the run shooting everything on camcorder as they go. Sounds familiar? Monster, made by The Asylum and distributed by Lighthouse, is as close to a rip-off of a certain other monster movie as it is possible to get (even though it was released first!) and it set me wondering about why people make derivative films. Cloverfield itself actually has very high production values - this film clearly cannot afford the same values so this is a cheap attempt to mimic an expensive attempt to look cheap.

Having started with a negative point, I have to say I really enjoyed this film, although more in the way you might enjoy an amateur or fringe theatre production. There's a lot to learn here about how to make films on a budget - clever use of sound and camera angles to convey panicking crowds without actually showing any people, etc. I might try some of this if I make any more short films. Most of the film seems to have been made by a handful of people - actually I was surprised by how many names were on the credits!

The two stars are Sarah Lieving and Erin Sullivan. Sarah is apparently a regular at Asylum, Erin has only a few credits including "Transmorphers" (I wonder what that one's about...) They're both endearing and reasonable actresses - this film gets a lot of criticism at least on imdb but this is mainly because it's derivative. It's also fair to say that unlike a film with a larger budget, the pair pretty much have to carry the whole film - clearly there was only a budget for a few minutes of film with other actors, plus the brief action climax at the end, plus a few extra dollars for special effects, so most scenes just feature the two girls, and a lot of the action can't be shown so they have to rely on their acting skills to convey it. The whole shoot must have been hard work.