Nemesis 5 starts further in the future, where Alex Sinclair (still played by Sue Price) is training an orphan she came across after one of her missions. She trains this orphan, and when she grows up (the grown-up played by Schuylar Craig), sends her back in time to take down the Red Army and their campaign of misinformation before they can create the horrible future that everyone is living in. Along the way, she has to fight the Red Army's goons, looking to stop her at any price. Will she succeed?
This is definitely an interesting addition to the Nemesis story--and to some extent it feels like a place holder before Pyun really wanted to bring it all together by combing the Nemesis world with the Cyborg and Omega Doom worlds. That said, it's very low budget, and probably only for Nemesis completists--and from the IMDb user reviews, a lot of them weren't happy with it either. It wasn't as bad as those 1s and 2s would have you believe though, it had its bright moments, like the lead, Schuylar Craig. She's worked with the director, Dustin Ferguson before, but also fit really well into the kind of strong female lead Pyun likes to use. I also liked Mel Novak and Dawna Lee Heising, but they're only in it at the very end. And I think that's where the budget constraints really hurt us. It would've been cool to see the scene where Craig confronts Novak and Heising set in either a large boardroom, or a darkened underground layer--something with a lot of atmosphere that the previous entries gave us. And maybe that's the ultimate conclusion here, it's good, but it could have been better.
Albert Pyun didn't direct this, he was the executive producer, and Dustin Ferguson was the director. Don't get me wrong, I think Dustin Ferguson is very good, and good at what he does in the low-budget realm in particular, but you can see how in that scene I described above with Craig, Novak, and Heising, that he's not quite Pyun when it comes to Pyun's aesthetic. You can talk budget constraints to me all you want, but Pyun did Deceit over three nights for $25,000 using equipment that he already had to rent to do the Cyborg reshoots, and that movie had atmosphere for days. That older Noirish element that Pyun brought to the previous installments, plus the Russ Meyer 60s exploitation and 50s/60s low-budget sci-fi, all mixed with 80s cyberpunk in his own unique Pyun flair is a hard thing to pull off, even if he's approving everything that's happening. There was a part of me, as I watched this, that couldn't help but wonder what this film would have looked like if Albert made it himself twenty years ago. It definitely would have been a different movie.
That being said, when you look at Dustin Ferguson's previous work, it's pretty much all horror, so this is definitely a departure from that, and for someone who's just switching over to sci-fi, this is a challenging way to do it. Yes, we have to judge a movie solely on its merits, but I think for a first sci-fi effort, and working within the confines of a budget, he did well here considering. It'll be interesting to see if Pyun farms more of his projects out to other directors in the future, and which directors he chooses for that. Obviously I'd always prefer Pyun to direct, but for me, if the choice is the work gets farmed out or it never happens at all, I'll choose the former; and I also like the idea of giving it to someone like Ferguson so he can grow as a director and add something more to his toolkit, because that only makes his work better and gives us more enjoyment when we watch his films too.
As I mentioned above, this may have been a placeholder for things to come with Pyun, and you get that sense just by looking at his in-development credits on IMDb. One is Cyborg Nemesis: Dark Rift, which just sounds too amazing for words. We also have Cyborg: Rise of the Flesh Eaters, which Pyun is attached to, but could also be like Nemesis 5, a means to get us to that merging of the two stories. On top of that, Pyun has two Kickboxer sequels listed starring Sasha Mitchell. In looking into some of these, I realized that I missed out on some GoFundMe campaigns while I was on hiatus to back some of these projects, but hopefully, Albert's health allowing, we'll get to see some of these make it to us in some form.
Finally, it would be good here to discuss some of the stars of the film. It'll be interesting to see if Schuylar Craig reprises her role in future Nemesis films, or if she makes her way into more Pyun films, because I think she matches what he wants in that strong female lead. Mel Novak is someone who we've seen on the site a few times, and also has the distinction of being someone who has played the president in one of our movies. I'd say he may be the one people would recognize the most, with Dawna Lee Heising second, and they both share the screen a bunch at the end, but aren't in it much before that. And then Sue Price reprises her role from the original films, but isn't in this much beyond the beginning in her role as the one passing the torch on to Craig. She's done some other films with Ferguson after coming back to make this, so we may have to check those out as well.
And with that we wrap this up. Right now you can stream this for free on Tubi. I think that's a good way to do it, that way you can decide for yourself if you want to pay to get it on DVD. The hope is that, health and resources willing, this is the start of more to come from Pyun, and if that's the case, I can't wait to see what we get.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7008310
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