Screamers: The Hunting (2009)

 

Following the dangerous escalation and purported destruction of the automated killing machines known as Screamers, planet Sirius 6B has been left deserted for some twenty years.

Or so all the records claim.  But when his ship picks up an SOS signal from the supposedly empty planet, Commander Andy Sexton leads a team to investigate.  Once the squad arrives, they find a group of human survivors eking out an existence in an old military outpost, but more important, they discover that the threat of the Screamers is far from over.  The killer machines have continued to evolve their camouflage and infiltration techniques, and Sexton's team soon finds its numbers dwindling.

Can the surviving team members survive the Screamers and find a way off-world, or are they doom to die gory deaths amid the ruined wastelands of Sirius 6B?  For that matter, could they suffer an even worse fate than that?

Made nearly 15 years after the original Screamers (linked above), Screamers: The Hunting is a made-for-TV sequel that features Arrow's Stephen Amell (not looking quite as buff here as he would for his most famous role) and Gina Holden, who for while there seemed to be making something of a career of being in not-very-good science fiction shows that I nonetheless enjoyed (Blood Ties and SyFy's Flash Gordon, specifically).  It also boasts a small role for Lance Henriksen, who was turning up for a lot of science fiction movie cameos at the time.  Presumably the thought process there was to cheaply cash in on the Aliens connection.

So it has a decent enough cast, but how does it compare to the original movie, overall?

Well, I think the short answer is that it's technically better than the original in most respects, but it's frankly not as much fun to watch.

The technical improvements include the visual effects.  Screamers: The Hunting definitely profits from the advancements in cinema techniques since the release of the 1995 movie: while it was almost certainly considerably cheaper to make than the original film, the improved make-up and effects technology allow it to look better in almost every request.  It's still a long way short of the quality of a big budget film, of course, and you'll almost certainly spot a few flaws, but honestly the visual effects were technically more competent than I expected them to be.

The script also has some strengths over that of the original: in particular, the strategy of the Screamers makes a fair bit more sense this time.  It's easier to see how the actions the killer machines take contribute to their primary goals, rather than just contributing to "and now we can have a twist for the audience, let's hope they never stop to think about whether this makes any sense".  It also offers some ideas about Screamer development that are potentially interesting.

Unfortunately, despite those strengths, the script is definitely not short of weaknesses.  The human characters are uniformly as dumb as rocks, probably even more than in the 1995 film, and the potentially interesting ideas about Screamer development seem to mainly exist purely to set up the ending.  And said ending is utterly goofy and laughable.  Even more than that of the original film.  Which is saying something, given how goofy the end of Screamers was.

Only for hard-core SF enthusiasts, this one.