20130804_b: Horror Movie Review--Future World

Future World: City of Mass Destruction

1. American live action theatrical film, rotoscoped to resemble animation, coupled with plenty of green screen for backgrounds and special effects.  Released in 2012, billed as a 'Thriller,' 120 minutes in length.
2. Set in the year 3000 after World War VI, the 'fourth apocalypse.'  The movie has some recognizable components.  I picked up their titles from the credits.
3. 'The Day Lady Killed': an impressively ugly woman fighter takes on the emperor's minions in the street and eventually loses.  She is forced to fight in an arena, defeats the meanest gladiator, then kills the emperor.  The number of violations of physical laws depicted runs into the dozens.
4. 'Here Comes the Fire': a seedy late middle-aged guy (Terrance) strolls through an even seedier part of town.  He picks up a job from his friend Jackson to aid in the next takeover of government.  Terrance switches sides (as if he had one), then betrays both factions.  Nice.  Fitting for the piece.
5. 'Race to the Balder': two idiots entertain themselves with future recreational substances.
6. 'Enter the Krennons': (about half the film's total time) the planet's atmosphere is going south, to reach the end of its ability to sustain human life in 3 years, 4 months, 29 days.  Operation Exodus VI ensues.  The digging involved awakens a powerful demon.  The DeVoz rulers seek aid from past defeated enemies, the Krennons, of which there are two left.  Right.  Two defeated enemy individuals can do what armies cannot?
7. Story arc 5: someone returns from death to retake the city.  The surviving Krennon prepares herself to battle this entity after it kills the DeVoz ruler.  Looks like an invite to a sequel.
8. From FlimFlam Films.  Clearly, these folks had no oversight from investment bankers.
9. What's missing?  Characters worth following.  Logic.  A single normal human face.  Anything that was in focus.
10. One star of five.  The +1 is for the credits, which contained the only humor in the film and the only good sound.  The rest of the movie was a zero.  20130927: four blackholes for cinematography, acting, screenplay, SFX.

Cinematography: 1/10
One of the worst jobs I've seen in years.  As per IMDB, 'A cutting edge rotoscoped feature in the style of Ralph Bakshi's Heavy Metal...' but without Bakshi's sense of style.  (That should be Heavy Traffic, by the way.)  Dark, dismal, out of focus, jumpy, beyond belief ugly/boring.  Continuity, depth of field, framing?  Forget those.

Sound: 5/10
Varies between annoying and really annoying.  During the credits, the music was rather nice, and there was relief from the dialog not matching facial movements.

Screenplay: 1/10
Looks like improvisation in front of green screen pasted together later in post.

Acting: 0/10
Seemed to be absent.  Costumes are absurd.  Body language is as muted and distorted as the rest of this mess.  The spoken word seems (at least) half a second or so out of synch with lip movement.

SFX: 1/10
Absurd and annoying, most of it on par with bad 1970's effects.  I think many pre-teens could do better at CGI.