How to Make a Monster (2001)

Fresh and Exciting

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Okay, first off, I'd like to say that all the negative reviews that think they're being funny by tearing into a low budget sci-fi horror movie are like the bullies who pick on the fat retarded kid. Sure, we all snicker a little bit, but nobody's impressed with your rapier wit dissecting the flaws of someone less fortunate than you.That said, they do serve a purpose...they let you know what kind of film this is. By having a few amateur Ebert's out there talking about how this is the worst movie, ever, you know you're not looking for a truly serious movie. Otherwise, even if it was bad, they would not have bothered to show up and try to be internet wise-guys.I really enjoy this movie and will stop and watch it whenever it is playing on TV. It's a cheap, funny, wildly inaccurate movie about a video game company that accidentally makes a monster when a lightning strike causes a motion capture suit become imbued with the AI of what would surely be a controversial game lambasted by the media for it's violence and gore.The characters are overblown, but they were written (rather well) to be so. The actors do a good job of portraying those characters in an exaggerated fashion. Tyler Mane (Hardcore - Sabertooth/Xmen, Ajax/Troy) is the muscular metal head, Karim Prince (Sol) is the cocky, geek-suave black guy, and Jason Marsden (Bug) is the geeky white guy. All fit some type of stereotype and play a 3 way foil to each other. Clea DuVall (Laura)is always welcome in this kind of role, the quiet, cute for a geek girl. Her abusive boyfriend is even played by Danny Masterson (Hyde, That 70's Show)They worked together before in The Faculty, where the size of their respective parts was about the same, I'm curious what the connection is.Anyway. Like the title says, this movie is basically a film version of a video game cut-scene. The plot's not airtight, the characters aren't deep or dynamic, and the production value's not high. But we suspend disbelief because it makes the experience enjoyable. Many people have commented on the inaccuracy of 3 guys making a triple A title in a week or so, but that was not the case, they were modifying an existing engine, and in the beginning of computer game development, the biggest games were still made by small teams in short time-spans.I don't know why I'm even trying to mend plot holes, because that's NOT the point. The point is, if you like old video games, cheap horror/sci fi movies, or better yet both, you will love this movie as much as I do. It reminds me all over of games like DOOM, Quake, Heretic, Hexen, basically the progenitors of games like Halo and Call of Duty (which have made video games more profitable than the movie and music industries) If you're too immature to appreciate the simplistic technology that made those games (and thus all games) possible, you probably won't enjoy this movie, either. So sit back, dig in, watch it while you download an emulator that will let you play all your favorite games from Middle and High school.

I'm not sure if the movie is meant as a serious horror movie or if it is some kind of joke.The game looks cheesy as Hell. Only blind morons could produce such a lame game.The publisher know the game sucks, so they hire 3 (THREE) guys for 3 weeks (as far as I remember) to fix "the monster". I guess the movie producers have no clue how long it takes to make a game these days. Nevermind the rest of the game, just fix the monster. If they get the job done they get $Million (again as far as I remember). Insane amount.The scene where the "programmers" enter the company for the first time and the intern walks in the Heavy metal programmer dude thinks she is a spy. Why?? Whyyy?? - One guy is assigned to weapons, and has loads of weapons, like swords and stuff on his desk. HAHA, so lame.The nerdy programmer is in charge of sound, and is actually not a programmer, but a sound guy. Oh well, almost the same thing right?? - A some point the company the security system kicks in and rooms a sealed off and the can't get out of the building. Must be expensive to install such a system, and.....whyyyy? - One of the programmers is doing an AI chip for the game...Hm...so this chip is shipped with the CD-ROM? Will it fit in an ordinary PC?? :) Why does he need a special chip for AI? Will he be able to get a factory to produce this chip with 3 weeks??? I seriously doubt it.The lightning makes the suit come alive. How does the suit move? It records movements when humans wear it, but has no servos or anything to make it move by itself. Arghh....!!! - The ending where the intern has gone evil, is just overdone. One of the worst cases of overacting I have ever witnessed.Even though it should earn a vote of 1 because on paper it should really really suck, I enjoyed it a little because it is so silly. It becomes a sport to spot the many flaws. I gave it 4.

I am a huge fan of B movies but this was absolutely terrible. I only rented it because I think Clea Duvall is a great actress. I think the movie is trying to make a point but the only one I got was that you need to be utterly ruthless to make it in the gaming world!?! ***SPOILER ALERT*** Basic plot is three game programmers, a manager, and an intern are locked in an office building with some electronic suit that comes to life because of electricity. It proceeds to kill everyone but the intern who all of a sudden develops sword fighting skills and kills the monster. Clea Duvall is the intern who starts out as a nice girl with an abusive boyfriend. But for some odd reason she turns into a money hungry software company boss. I think there is a plot somewhere but I got distracted by a wrestler trying to act like a computer geek. Anyway, the movie is a complete waste of time and even Clea Duvall's great acting can't save the movie. Oh and someone needs to tell Julie Strain she doesn't look good topless anymore.

...because it becomes obvious in a big hurry that they have never used a computer in their life. The cast assembled to play the programmers is funny enough, but what really gets this viewer laughing is how much arguing goes on about various aspects of the game they are programming. Or the deadline set by the money men. A team of three programmers will not be able to code a complete game, especially not one with all the advanced routines talked about, in a mere four weeks. If you have any doubts about this, check out the list of people responsible for putting together Doom, at the time of release considered the most advanced video game ever made. It took a lot longer than four weeks for that dozen-plus crew.By far the most amusing part of the film is the scene with Julie Strain in a so-called motion capture suit. Anyone who has seen the spandex monstrosity that Andy Serkis wore during photography for The Two Towers will recognise this scene as utterly ridiculous. That Strain (the one depicted in the film) would not see this for the idiotic hustle that it is defies credibility. I find it difficult to believe that the other actors didn't read this script and absolutely balk at it.There is also a reason that most films do not depict things involving a computer without fictionalising it. If one watches what the user does for any length of time, it becomes boring in a big hurry. The problem here is that none of the sequences filmed in order to compensate for this have been thought through. When Clea DuVall is sitting before a computer with VR goggles, trying to fight the game's monster, the number of times she takes them off and puts them back on again is ridiculous. Given that there is no connection between any of the computers and the ridiculous flesh-machine construct, exactly how this solution is meant to work defies belief. You can claim infra-red wireless networking until you are blue in the face. It wasn't in common usage even in 2001, and as anyone who has tried to use it can tell you, calling Wi-Fi networking unreliable is like calling Ed Wood slightly incompetent.Given that the cast includes such B-level stars as Clea Duvall and Tyler Mane, I think the fault for the stupidity of this piece lies entirely with the screenwriters. The cardinal sin anyone can commit when writing a story that involves computers as a central basis for the plot is to overestimate the capabilities of the modern CPU. Giving the computer the ability to learn tactical points would require more storage space, and processing power, than even the most modern supercomputers are able to muster. Every single observation from experience would have to be stored as a programming note, and most home CPUs would turn into a steaming pool of goo trying to look them up.Not to mention that it seems a modern malady that programmers mistake "more enjoyable" for meaning "more difficult". There gets to be a point where you can only do the same thing in a game so many times over before you want to rip the disc out and hit it with a hammer. The modern law, as I put it to game programmers, is that if you have a choice between making a shorter game or making one that feels impossible to win, make the shorter game. The scenes at the beginning with the children telling us how much this game sucks could really apply to any video game made in the past ten years, with few spectacular exceptions (Resident Evil comes to mind).I gave How To Make A Monster a one out of ten. The reasons for this are numerous. It is poorly-researched, poorly-written, and poorly made. Mystery Science Theatre 3000 would have a field day with this turkey. When the highlight of a film is Julie Strain jumping up and down, well, I don't think I need to say more.