Warriors of Terra – review

Director: Robert Wilson

Release date: 2006

Contains spoilers

Ok, it’s “made by science” vampire time and whilst the V word isn’t mentioned and the film is shot as an atypical creature feature, this is definitely a vampire though an unusual one. I had considered for a moment whether to write this as a ‘Vamp or Not?’ article but decided the use of genre tropes was strong enough to just review.

Its also not the greatest film in the world. The premise is unusual enough but the plotting is by the numbers, the acting mostly so-so and, worst of all, is the choice in visuals a depressingly dull greenish hue that sets the tone all wrong.

Jade and Ali

So the opening credits have a voice over as we are told about a bio-tech lab that a bunch of young college animal rights activists are going to hit in order to vandalise, video and rescue the animals within. They have pulled off twelve successful raids previously and this time they have someone on the inside. One of them, Fix (Andrew Hachey), brings Ali (Ellen Furey), to their van and introduces her to remote tech girl Izzy (Krystin Pellerin), Tim (Dylan Taylor) and leader Jade (Andrea Lui). Ali is the daughter of head researcher Dr Woods (Andrew Gillies) and has brought his access card – she wants to make him notice her.

part of the squad

Ali insists on going with them – though Jade tries to prevent it. Inside are two security guards and one of them, Chris (Edward Furlong), is Ali’s new boyfriend and the inside guy. He opens the gate for them after distracting the other guard, Wayne (Marc Hickox), and is to open the door for them but Jade is impatient and uses the key card. This sets off an alert that Wayne notices and he calls his boss, Peter Issacs (James McGowan), who in turn calls in an armed tactical security squad. Meanwhile the kids have hit the labs and found nothing, cages are empty and there is an elevator that needs both the access card and a code (the second of which they don’t have).

Trina Brink as Maya

Realising the squad is there, Izzy tries to hack the code but there are too many door codes and she eventually just purges the IT system and unlocks all the doors in the facility. They manage to get in the elevator but Chris is tazed. Now the layout made little sense. There is nothing of interest upstairs and the underground facility is abandoned and decrepit. Inside it is Maya (Trina Brink) and she is our vampire. Plot wise she stalks and kills and people die – until final girl, all under the threat of nerve gas being released to destroy Maya, but why do I say she is a vampire?

Woods and Maya

Woods was working on a cure for cancer and was successful, with pigs. He essentially genetically modified them having pulled genes from creatures with strong regenerative traits and then bound the new DNA via a virus. However his concoction failed to work with human test subjects and so he upped the virus ante – as it were – and used a virulent strain of Ebola. His test subject was Maya and he was successful, her cancer gone within a day, but she continued to mutate. So what was it about the mutation that makes me say she’s a vampire?

melting

She is hungry (always) and her new food of choice is us. She uses her fingers to inject a toxin into the victim that causes their flesh to liquidise and she literally drinks her victim – the toxin is also touch transmitted, so touch the liquid gunk of a victim’s remains and you’ll start melting too! She is incredibly cold to the touch, she regenerates from injury with speed (but needs to feed) and her reflexes are heightened. Unanswered issues focus around the facts that she seems to be able to both vanish and become semi-transparent, and there also seems to be a thing about her transmitting a light (which was seemed important as Issacs and Woods mention it but don’t explain it).

vamp face

She was captured after killing several nurses by slowing her down with an anti-toxin designed to fight botulism and placed in cryogenic storage. This included an iron crate that looked remarkably like a sarcophagus, which was ‘buried’ in the cryogenic unit. In the actual film she is tricked into ingesting the anti-toxin again and this leads to her developing a monstrous visage – akin to a vamp face (though it's a full body transformation). That is about all we got for traits but, whether the filmmakers realised it or not they did liberally spread the vampire tropes around.

semi-transparent

But the film went by the numbers. Most of the characters are forgettable, there isn’t the tension needed to carry the film but the worst thing was the colour decisions. The off-green look feels turgid and this has affected the score I’m afraid. The high security lab with only two guards felt wrong and under-staffed and the lack of anything in the upper building didn’t ring true. As for the lab below, as well as ripping off Resident Evil in design, the design also felt wrong as it was too much abandoned factory and not enough high-tech lab mothballed. I should also mention the sound; mostly non-descript, Maya’s sound effects made her vanishing sound like a bug and the slurping noises sounded off.

3 out of 10 – the score would have been higher if the film looked better but it wouldn’t have limped over being average.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Blu-ray @ Amazon UK