How bad is it? It's one of the all-time worst, though apparently intentionally so.
Should you see it? Yes. By all means.
This had developed a very rapid cult following before many people could see it. A few key scenes were getting national air time. People were comparing it to "Plan 9 From Outer Space." Then director Nguyen went to Sundance with a van advertising his film and the film's website, painted on the van, was misspelled. He over-reached. Even before I'd seen it, it was obvious that it was intentionally bad and he was pretending that it was legitimately the best he could do. I would not be surprised if people were hired to give this low ratings at IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes and similar sites. It's a pretty sophisticated scam.
That said, the movie's very funny. The special effects are the worst, just computer icons add in post with flapping wings that never fly, or even move out of formation. And people attack them with coat hangers! Then they explode, spraying green goop over the actors, who have priceless reaction shots. The plot is braindead, most of the "action" is static, the leads are forgettable. The audio cuts out, seemingly at random. It's terrible, but enjoyably terrible and the fact that it's intentional only slightly dilutes the fun.
If you'd seen James Nguyen's other films (or has seen him in interviews) you'd know that this unbelievable awfulness was DEFINITELY not intentional. Even if you read other your list of other movies, you'd know that "foreign transplants with tenuous grasp on the language and culture making bad American movies" (see "The Room" or "Samurai Cop" for more details) is not as uncommon as you might think.
ReplyDelete