The Blackjacks are an elite team of private military contractors. Their latest mission comes from a powerful venture capitalist named Cromwell. He has lost contact with his high security energy research facility, located somewhere in Kazakhstan. The Blackjacks need to enter the facility, find the chief scientist, and extract him safely.
To help locate the scientist, Cromwell provides a psychic named Lisa Westbrook. This is merely the first signal that there's something unusual about this apparently straight-forward extraction job. And sure enough, once the Blackjacks get on site, they find themselves in a desperate battle with an extra-dimensional monster that the scientist's research accidentally unleashed.
If the above summary sounds like a very generic SF/horror monster movie, well that's because this film - which is also known as SEAL Patrol - is indeed a very generic SF/horror monster movie. A fact that is probably tipped off by the coattail-riding use of 'Predator' in the title.
The big problem here is the writing, which is plodding and meandering, despite the brief, sub-80 minute runtime. There are a lot of sequences that smack heavily of padding, as the film desperately tries to fill time with content that doesn't need it to show the monster itself. Probably due to financial constraints.
If the above summary sounds like a very generic SF/horror monster movie, well that's because this film - which is also known as SEAL Patrol - is indeed a very generic SF/horror monster movie. A fact that is probably tipped off by the coattail-riding use of 'Predator' in the title.
The big problem here is the writing, which is plodding and meandering, despite the brief, sub-80 minute runtime. There are a lot of sequences that smack heavily of padding, as the film desperately tries to fill time with content that doesn't need it to show the monster itself. Probably due to financial constraints.
A particular example of this kind of padding is a sub-plot about the scientist's daughter. She is missing, presumed dead. But then the Blackjacks find her alive! Huzzah! ... and then two minutes later she is killed off. So glad we had that time together.
On the plus side, when we do finally see the monster, it's actually a reasonably good design. A shame then that it does very little while 'on camera', presumably again due to those financial limitations.
If you're really hankering for an SF/horror monster mash, there are much better options. Including some movies that are technically worse, but at least have more chutzpah.
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