a review of 毁灭战士：灭绝

I mean, it's no Aliens, but when it comes to watching a bunch of marines shoot up monsters in space it delivers the goods despite the low budget and direct-to-video release. It even resembles the games more than the one with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson does. It's biggest deficiency might just be that it doesn't borrow more from the source material's enemy variety. Too many repeated waves of possessed humans make it feel more like a pop 'n shoot zombie flick than it should. The practical effects in this are really impressive. The weapons do look a little plastic, but the demon costumes and sets are quite convincing. Even the CGI isn't bad. We're not talking Avatar or anything, but I'd say the special effects are on par with the graphics of the 2016 reboot game. The plot and characters are kind of meh, but both do a serviceable job of carrying the action forward to the next cheesy shootout and at least aren't offensively terrible. I think the amount of nods to the games should please those who've played them. There's nothing as cool as the first-person sequence in the previous adaptation, but you get to see some fan favorite weapons like the chainsaw being used, a Wolfenstein easter egg, some amusing references, and the characters even pick up colored key cards to reach new areas. Plus the setup more closely resembles that of the id Software classic than what we got before. Ultimately though, I'd say the 2005 movie with Karl Urban is still the more entertaining option. Annihilation still has its merits however. On top of being a surprisingly decent bit of straight-to-DVD schlock (based on a video game no less!), it has a remarkable amount of franchise fidelity. If action-horror in space is your thing, be it Event Horizon or Jason X, you can know that this ranks just above Ghosts of Mars when it comes to unleashing hell on, well, Mars.