This one came up on Tubi, and I figured more Wesley Snipes DTV couldn't be a bad thing. The trailer made it look pretty sweet too, so I was sold. On the IMDb critics review page, I was surprised to see that out of the 35 there, none of the usual suspects had covered this. No Bulletproof Action or The Action Elite, let alone any of our mainstays like The Video Vacuum. I guess that means I'm venturing forth, and will now have my review mixed in a sea of sci-fi and horror bloggers and critics--which isn't bad considering I never intended to be an action only site anyway.
The Recall follows a group of kids traveling to a remote lake for a weekend getaway. In the process, they bump up against local survivalist Snipes, who doesn't seem too fond of them. Then their good time is interrupted by an alien invasion. Now our kids are trying to escape, but run into the usual horror movie issues, a couple get picked off, and now the remaining kids are trying to work with Snipes to survive and make it home alive. That's the first 70 minutes or so, and then the kids end up getting captured, the aliens give them some upgrades, and drop them back off near the lake--meaning all that earlier stuff was for nothing.
I was trying to figure out why this didn't work for me, and ultimately that last sentence was it. What is the point of having these kids spend all this time trying to get away from the aliens, only to ultimately have them get captured and be dropped back down near the lake? That should be like the first 20 minutes, and then the next 60 is them dealing with their new "upgrades." Or the movie is like it was, but some of the kids ultimately get away. The other issue is Wesley Snipes is too large a presence, and he totally overshadows the younger actors, plus what he's doing as a survivalist is much more interesting than whatever drama the kids are dealing with. So not only is he stealing every scene, but when he's not on screen I can't wait for him to come back. There were some positives: the movie looked really nice--it was directed by Mauro Borelli, who was an illustrator for a lot of big movies--, and I liked some of the ideas the film was trying to mine; plus Snipes was great when we had him. Overall though I think this just didn't work for me.
This was an interesting choice of film for Snipes, and the film is leaning heavily on his name to sell it. It's not exactly a Snipes bait-and-switch, but his character is not one among whom the film revolves around; but he was so good, and his character so interesting, that I wanted the whole thing to revolve around him as I'm watching it. And maybe that's what it was, he wanted to play this character because he liked the idea of it, and that's what drew him in. I haven't seen Coming 2 America yet, but I did review Dolemite is My Name in 2020, and what was cool was how Snipes was as good in this as he was in that. My hunch is, if he has any future DTV stuff, it'll be more intriguing characters like this than straight-ahead mail-it-in actioners, which will at least let us know his end of it will be interesting if we see his name on the tin.
One area the movie tries to mine is the sense that aliens as a greater species might treat us as a lesser species the way we treat animals. Why not experiment on us? Try to make us in a way that they think is better? For decades we've turned chickens into these monstrosities with massive breasts that grow to maturity in a matter of weeks and their legs break because they can't hold up their unnatural weight. Or we've bred cats with some feral cousin that they haven't had a common ancestor with for millions of years because we think they look pretty. It would be the equivalent of breeding us with chimps. The problem is, the movie just grazes this concept at the very end of the film then leaves it. Again, if this is the message, I feel like it belongs way at the beginning. Like have these kids or Snipes really delve into what it means to have been experimented on, even if it may mean being "improved."
Another area this film touches on but can't get too far into because of the story construct, is how the male lead among the kids is grieving because his girlfriend died in a car accident. We find out later that that accident happened because he was driving and fell asleep behind the wheel. He confesses all of this to the female lead in the group, as the two of them are developing feelings for one another. This on its own could have been a 90s indie flick, watching these two develop their relationship in the aftermath of that tragedy, forget the aliens and all the other stuff. In a standard horror film, we'd be okay with this only being touched on while the two fight for survival; but here, when the aliens essentially win, and the male lead is pulling the girl out of an alien bath with gross cords attached to her back, it falls back on the whole "what was the point of all that?"
Finally, this movie suffers from something a lot of horror movies that follow a group of kids runs into: the characters are often not that great. The thing is, in a standard horror film, that's okay, because these kids are going to be picked off by the killer one-by-one, so we trade off being annoyed by them now knowing they'll get their comeuppance. Because this film makes us think we're going down that route, then shifts things on us, we lose that payoff--and some of these characters are particularly grating and vacuous, and could use an ice pick through a well-crafted fake eyeball made by a great make-up artist plying their trade. The reality is, this all could have been avoided by dumping the kids altogether and making this about Snipes fighting the aliens and some government soldiers--if the movie wanted to go the direction they eventually went in with the aliens winning.
And with that, let's wrap this up. You can get this on Tubi here in the States. At 85 minutes it's not too long; but with the various plot peregrinations, it feels a bit longer, and as I said, ultimately I was left thinking "what was the point of everything I followed these people through?"
For more information: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5669936
And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, A Girl and a Gun, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!
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