Reader Recommendation: The Mutant Chronicles (2008)

Today I chose to watch Mutant Chronicles which had been recommended to me a long time ago. Side note: if you look carefully, you'll notice the poster I picked for this movie is the Japanese dvd cover. This is not a Japanese movie, but when I looked up possible posters at MovePosterDB.com I have never seen so many different posters and covers for any movie in my life. So I decided to have some fun with it and picked a Japanese cover featuring Deven Aoki. But this movie doesn't really star her, the big names here are Thomas Jane and Ron Perlman. The story is simple, alien machine lands on earth and starts turning people into mutants. A group of soldiers go off to save the world. Hit the jump to see if this modern day B-movie has any redeeming qualities.


Actually, it does have quite a few redeeming qualities and it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be at the start. The basic story, while fairly simple, is set in a weird yet interesting future world in which the whole world is owned by 4 competing and warring companies. Long ago, in what I can only assume would be the dark ages, the alien machine crashed into the Earth, and after defeating the mutant swarm was sealed off from the world deep underground. Now in the 28th century, two of the warring companies have a front line very near the seal which has since been buried slightly under the surface. It is uncovered by artillery fire and breaks open. The mutant hordes are set free and they proceed to overwhelm all forces in their way.

The mutants are coming!

The designs for the mutants and the technology of this world apparently set in the year 2707 is oddly steam-based. There is very little in the way of computers from what I saw, and everything is mechanical. Even their huge flying ships are fueled by coal it seems. The whole setting is very steam punk for sure, but there really aren't many movies that go that route so it actually kept it pretty unique. The mutants seem to be a combination of the basic zombie movie but with a Frankenstein twist, and this steam punk aesthetic. Each one has had it's arm replaced with a huge blade for example.

Crazy steam punk air ship of the year 2707

While for the most part I liked the unique take on a futuristic world, I did have a slight problem with part of their artistic choice to wash out every scene with browns and grays. There is very little color to this movie and it all has this almost sepia tone to it. It was a little too much in my opinion and it made the blood look very strange as it stood out awkwardly being that they kept it a bright unnatural red.

Where's all the color? I know for a fact Ron Perlman is in a bright red robe in this scene!

The strengths of this movie surprisingly came out in the acting. While it wasn't super great, it was still pretty good thanks to Ron Perlman and Thomas Jane. Why is that Ron Perlman seems to be in every slightly sub-par movie? He's everywhere! Similarly for Thomas Jane who was in the first Punisher movie as well as a personal favorite of mine The Mist. And just like those movies, Mutant Chronicles has a certain charm to it that lets it become more than the sum of it's parts.

In the end I was at least entertained and didn't find myself getting bored as is sometimes possible with B-movies. I can even say that I liked the ending too. It could be a hard recommendation to make to some people, but if you love lots of action and mutants and steam punk "Final Fantasy" worlds, maybe this would be for you. It kind of reminded me of Outlander. If you liked that movie, you'll probably like this one too even though they're quite different in theme.