I believe every movie lover has that one movie which is absolutely horrible in all aspects but they have strong emotional attachment to it. For me it is “Dirty Harry” and all other 70s action movies starring Bruce Lee. As a teenager, I sat up every single night watching those movies and loving every minute of it. Sure, they had the same plot, tropes, and archetypes re-used time and again, sometimes to a ludicrously bad degree, but they had heart. During times, such as the Watergate scandal and gasoline rations, it served as a form of catharsis to the audience. So what if Charles Bronson, a man who killed bad guys long before Jack Bauer finished high school, seemed more like a video game character. Unfortunately, “Cloned: The Recreator Chronicles” does not have any redeeming, funny qualities. It’s just devoid of any emotion. I mean, the film begins with a scene of John de Lancie urinating and goes downhill from there.
“Cloned” opens with three friends camping on an island in the middle of a lake. Two are best friends Craig (Alexander Nifong) and Derek (Jamal Mallory-McCree), who have gone on one last trip together before Derek joins the Marines. Tagging along is Derek’s girlfriend Tracy (Stella Maeve), who’s come back from her first summer at college a different girl. What the trio doesn’t realize is that the island they’ve chosen features a once abandoned house that is no longer abandoned and a series of lightening heavy thunder storms that pose a rather dangerous situation for them. In any case, once a particularly nasty storm hits, the three of them go to take shelter in the house.
As the owners are apparently absent, they do make themselves quite comfortable. Things seem to be doing just fine until Elizabeth (Laura Moss) and her husband Dr. Frank Miller (John de Lancie) arrive. But now, the man and woman chasing them through the house are not the owners, instead, they’re stronger, faster clones whose sole desire is to replace humanity for other clones. Most of the film details the teenagers conflict with clones of themselves that emerged from the same wreckage as the original set of clones. This, of course, comes with some of the conventional retro horror elements like a mad scientist and a deserted lab.
The acting here ranges from a sleepwalker’s performance during the teens’ scene (where they first view the naked clones of their bodies and can barely do more than gasp) to the somewhat dramatized versions of the clones. Nifong and Mallory-McCree approach the script with an abundance of uncertainty towards each character they are expected to portray. They do not attempt to create nuance that distinguishes the human from the clones. Instead, they lean towards obvious and excessive exaggeration that annihilates any tension from their scenes. Anyone who watches “Cloned” will not get confused between the human Derek and clone Derek.
Maeve comes closest to pulling it off. On several occasions, I wondered if her clone character’s motives were sincere. Maeve’s Tracy is a stereotype of a shallow self-centered sorority girl. She has zero affection for Craig, which everyone in the film including the audience know. But the clone Tracy knows to make the most of it. Ultimately, I believe Maeve’s performance is more authentic. However, the degree of consistency that would transform the film from weak to strong is still absent.
Non-fiction television is not exactly comparable to features, which shows why Gregory Orr’s transition from writer to director is less than appealing. I am convinced that fun camp as a dialogue did not stand out because there was nothing intentionally colorful and witty enough to make it somewhat worthwhile. Rather, what I got was unintentionally funny phrases like, “If I were a key, where would I be.” A magically strong phrase to keep a person awake for 90 minutes. The characters lacked any color apart from some random traits to make them relatable and give the pieces of important plot some animation. Using a scroll placed at the bottom of the screen brought something new to the table. “Hey, that naked guy over there running from the beach is a clone.”
Hard work is also needed to create a boring, cheesy and weak horror film, and this is exactly what I presume Orr’s vision was. I mean, one tries to take an effect seriously, but the start reminds me of a 60s horror film. And it wasn’t meant to look that way either. They just could not accomplish anything better. Granted, he must have worked with a tighter budget, but if Shane Carruth can create better effects on a $7,000 budget, then something’s wrong with your effects team.
The editing is almost flawless with the content provided, but I would like to know what was cut out. How did this help or hurt the film? George Lucas attempting to portray real emotion from an actor like Jake Lloyd (now Jake Broadbent) comes to mind when considering Orr’s working with his actors. The emotions are present and available to be used, but are masked behind that emotionless expression.
To be honest, I tried to enjoy “Cloned: The Recreator Chronicles,” but I was unable to. With each passing minute, it felt increasingly tedious. Very little of the story had been thought out, and I suspect that is due to how little of it was original or had any heart and soul. I expected to see some good slasher movie gore or feel the edge of my seat nervousness for the characters as they get manipulated toward their impending doom, but for the entire 90 minutes, I felt nothing. It honestly felt like someone had taken a bad horror movie, dubbed it fun, and then removed the only two good elements: the gore and the tension, as well as the shallow chasing scenes in the woods, the shouting, and all other aspects that make viewing such films enjoyable. As it stands, what we have here sits painstakingly blank on the screen, more like a film which would go down in history as incomplete and unexciting.
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