HYDRA (2009)

HYDRA (2009)

Tagline: Prepare To Be Consumed

(Action, Adventure, 5 Heads Are Better Than 1) [R]

It means this island is volcanic, were probably close to lava tubes, let's move.

In this one, an archeological team is sent to a remote island. Once there, all but one of the team is killed by the hydra of Greek myth. Months later a team of rich hunters besets the island in a deadly game where they are hunting convicts for entertainment. None of the hunters knows that one of the people they are hunting is a former Marine trained to kill who was thrown into the mix to make things more interesting. Can any of them survive each other or the hydra?

First off, this is not a movie you should run to if you are attempting to find quality anything. I have no idea how in 2009 CGI this bad could possibly pass as screen worthy. I am not going to lie and say the CGI is as bad as BIRDEMIC or anything, but it’s some of the worst in any of the movies I have ever seen. Someone could have almost hand-drawn this hydra with crayons and given us a better-looking end result. The dialog in most b-movies is loaded with cheese, but this thing is over the top loaded with dialog so bad it couldn’t even be used in a high school play. 

Acting wise we do get a Dawn Olivieri (BRIGHT) as Gwen, but she and the rest of the cast just aren’t given anything to work with. George Stults also appears in this as Tim Nolan and isn’t actually a bad actor, but for some reason seems to have slipped into a cheesy Christmas romance b-movie vortex at some point in 2009 and hasn’t come back to the real world since. Texas Battle (FINAL DESTINATION 3) makes an appearance as Ronnie and at the very least is his usual even-keeled stuff not helping the movie, but not hurting it either. To wrap up the main cast we get Michael Shamus Wiles who plays Captain Sweet and somehow manages to be the worst thing about this movie with such a bad effort that it stands out in a field of bad efforts. Michael is best known for FIGHT CLUB, but don’t worry. The first rule of reviews is that we don’t talk about FIGHT CLUB. 

There are some attempts to at least give this movie an interesting score, but it comes across as more of a rip-off from an old episode of “Hunter” than anything else. Cinematically there is next to no effort here and it seems like maybe the film crew was either massively incompetent or they were given 2 weeks to shoot a movie that needed 2 months or more. 

Here is the good news, with an iPhone, $25.00, and some canned special effects suites you too can make a movie better than this thing and watch that instead. I rarely rip on b-movies all that much when it comes to certain things, but this movie is so un-redeeming in its execution and plot that it’s nearly impossible to not just rip on it. I think some b-movies are so bad they are good because at the very least you can laugh at them. That isn’t the case here; this movie is trying to be serious and just fails on every level possible. I didn’t hate the characters or anything, it just could have been so much more even if just something as simple as the script would have been vetted better. 

Overall I have to give this thing a 2 out of 7. Even the idea just wasn’t all that well thought out. That’s it, that’s the review…catch you for the next one.

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF CINETEL FILMS AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY.