Screamers (1995)

(Second Viewing, In French, On Cable TV, December 2019) If you’re not French-Canadian, you probably don’t know how Screamers was a minor sensation in French-Canada when it came out in 1995. After all, it had been produced in Québec at a time when few Hollywood productions made their way to La Belle Province, was financed by a Québec-based company, directed by a French-Canadian (Christian Duguay), largely crewed by Montréal-area people, and featured then-big-name star Roy Dupuis in a supporting role. For SF fans, it was noteworthy for featuring a script co-written by Dan O’Bannon from a Philip K. Dick story, which was still a bit of a novelty before the big wave of PKD-inspired Hollywood movies of the 2002–2012 decade. Alas, the disappointment was real when Screamers was released and wasn’t anything special. Twenty-five years later, the film has not improved. In fact, it’s now more obnoxious than ever considering that nearly everything in it bears the stamp of cheap mid-1990s filmmaking and has been remade much better by other movies. The dullness sets in early as the film features post-apocalyptic visuals on a planet ravaged by war and an enemy that passes itself as something else. Considering its Philip K. Dick pedigree, it’s no big surprise that the human characters may not be. Considering that it’s a cheap Science Fiction B-movie featuring monsters, it’s also not a surprise that the number of characters constantly dwindles on the way to the ending. Dour, downbeat, and relentlessly ugly, Screamers bears the hallmark of the worst of its filmmaking era. Late-analog effects stick out in a bad way, and a boring script doesn’t help. There are occasional flashes of competence, but those only recall better examples of the form. Roy Dupuis apparently dubs his own character on the French-language version, but that’s not a good thing considering how his French-Canadian accent keeps sticking out among more neutral mid-Atlantic voices. The result is just tedious, ugly, and exasperating. I saw Screamers on VHS in the mid-1990s, but had forgotten about it until now … and am now ready to forget about it once more.