Saturday, January 13, 2018

MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE-JANUARY OF SUCK 3

Stephen King had a drug problem back then, forgive him.
Look at that poster, listen to the soundtrack, hell even the title, Maximum Overdrive, is so badass, so why is this movie so boring? That's perhaps the film's biggest issue, everything in the film would suggest a killer, action-packed horror, but everything moves at such a dull pace that even scenes that are incredibly silly don't land much laughs. I came in expecting a schlocky, exploitation film, maybe something akin to a Troma feature, but instead I got The Happening, but slightly less dumb and because of that, less unintentionally comedic.

So what's it about? Well a group of people find themselves trapped inside a gas station/diner when a bunch of machines, noticeably trucks, come to life with only one goal in mind, killing humans. For whatever reason the trucks circle the diner, only attacking the people if they run outside, again, for whatever reason. Along the way other people join the diner hideout, including a married couple and a kid who narrowly escaped death from a soda vending machine, I swear that's what I saw happen. Though as time goes on the captives in the diner get more restless, some go crazy and question how the machines would even dare kill them as humans made machines, it's probably the film's most unintentional comedic scene. The group must survive, avoiding death by truck, including the ring leader truck which sports the Green Goblin's head for some reason; also to be avoided, a sentient machine gun, which is odd because the heroes carry weapons that never come to life, so the consistency here is all over the place.

I really wanna talk about the consistency by the way, because it never feels like we get an understanding of what comes to life and what doesn't. We see one of the patrons in the diner wielding a bazooka at multiple times, so weapons aren't alive, but then the machine gun is and it hates human, yet the weapons the heroes carry at the end aren't alive, why? At one point a drive-through speaker alerts nearby machines of people in the vicinity, yet nothing else does, again why? This is a horror premise that's actually interesting, yet the film is anything but that.

This is a dull sit-through, boring through multiple stretches, confusing at others, but rarely is it as fun as it deserves to be.

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Written by Octaviano Macias 

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