Sorry for the irregular posting. I'm still trying to work out a schedule that works for regular updates. I would prefer 2 movies a week but we don't always get what we want.
This time we are once again shifting generas and delving into that great unknown called survival horror. Survival horror is a subgenera of action or horror depending on which category it leans towards more. Typically in horror movies the main characters are trying to survive but their survival is not the focus, their fear is. Survival horror attempts to go back to some kind of Hitchcock inspired suspense based fear to elicit emotions from the audience. Unlike your typical slasher flick, scenarios tend toward the ridiculous and implausible, thus removing the possibility for the viewer to find themselves in the situation. Therefore different scare tactics must be used. One of these is gore. Several movies that fall under this category are Alien, The Thing, and Virus. Movies like this prey on our fears of the unknown while the gruesome monsters and deaths can often come off as cartoonish. In the true spirit of Hitchcock, these movies are far more terrifying when nothing is happening.
Our current focus is on the 1995 film Proteus, not to be confused with the 2002 Proteus about the love affair of a black man and a white man in a south African prison camp, or the 2004 Proteus which is a documentary about undersea exploration in the 19th century. Apparently "proteus" is a generic title if you have no idea what to call your movie. Proteus as it turns out was an early Greek sea god. Unfortunately for him, he was also a lesser god getting beaten up by anyone who wanted his secret knowledge. Oh, and his sons were killed by Hercules. Clearly his name will strike fear into the hearts of women and children everywhere! Let's name our terrifying movie after him! And thus Proteus was born...
A little back story before I get into the movie. Proteus was based on a book, Slimer, written by Australian science fiction writer John Brosnan. This is one of 3 books by John that have been turned into movies. This particular one by Bob Keen. Never hear of the great Bob Keen? That's because he's a special effects guy. In fact he specializes in monster makeup. Bob Keen has worked makeup, animatronics, and puppet fabrication for such films as Hellraiser, Event Horizon, The Never Ending Story, The Dark Crystal, and Return of the Jedi. He has been nominated five times for the Saturn Award for best make-up. But in 1993, sixteen years after being a model maker for Star Wars, he decided to try his hand at directing. It was called Shepherd on the Rock. I haven't seen it but apparently it was good enough to justify his directing job on the side of his continuing special effects career. Proteus was his fourth film as a director and it shows he is a growing but still immature director.
Our movie opens on a man being questioned about what happens a glimpse of an action flashback and then an incredibly dull and boring opening about the worst bunch of heroin smugglers you've ever seen. The actors come on set arguing giving off all the emotion of a high school performance. One character has supposedly just lost a finger to the angered Triads, or something, but seems more annoyed that no one is sympathizing with him than traumatized by having a finger cut off, presumably with loads of death threats on the side. It is here, as our heroes escape(...china?) that we have one of my favorite lines in the movie, "Lets pray for some strong wind(as the boat's engine starts in the background...)".
This begins the long process of figuring what was put into the movie because of the book, and what was put in by the film makers. Off camera the six idiots sink their yacht with all their drugs, saves money. They then have lots of pointless dialogue that only serves to show that they are in 3 couples and none of them get along. This wasn't really necessary but its there anyway. When you see scenes like this in a movie this is a telltale sign that the movie is trying to be faithful to its book. Dune was infamous for this even including the interior monologues of characters. Prince Caspian, as one of its many flaws, tried to make up for the inaccuracies by lifting useless blocks of dialogue from the book.
Having not read Slimer I can only guess that this is true. It seems that most of the detail was left out in favor of atmosphere and action scenes. For instance, Alex and Rachel turn out to be undercover DEA agents. What significance does this hold? Absolutely none. Did their police training help them at all? No. Did they have access to special knowledge that helped them fight the monster? No. Did it keep them from getting killed? Only in Alex's case. The only reason this is included in the film that I can think of is to find a reason for us to sympathize with the characters. This is a common convention in movies. No matter how bad your main character is, no matter what they have done, we have to sympathize with them. This film chooses the route of "they were just pretending to be drug smugglers". And I guess the other woman who survives was just going along with what her boyfriend was doing so it's ok. Ladies, if you can blame a life of crime on your boyfriend your off the hook. Great message Proteus!
On a side note about the gender interactions in this movie, women are incredibly helpless. This is partially because the guys seem to just bring their girlfriends on all their drug running missions. Like I said, worst drug smugglers ever! Of course we have to have a happy ending but Alex's girlfriend/DEA partner (?) has just been killed. He's brooding just a bit, but it seems like love is in the air as he and the last surviving woman from the original cast fly off into the sunset. Just a bit strange since he was so attached to Rachel 30 minutes before that he couldn't shoot a monster that looked like her even though he knew she was dead. Odd messages all around.
For all the bad acting, generic plot, and inconsistencies, there were several things this movie did well. As strange as the situation was that the characters found themselves in it their reactions mostly made sense. Especially when you considered that they were also drug users and their heroin supply was running out. My first thought is the movie Sunshine where a group of astronauts have to fly to the sun to do something to make it not die. These are the most important people in the galaxy tasked with saving not only humanity, but all like in the solar system. Who do they choose, a bunch of emotional wrecks with interpersonal problems. It's a little implausible that a group that important would have such a poor sampling of humanity, however when your characters are a bunch of drug dealers it kind of works. They get easily distracted, they panic in the dark hallways. The plausibility at the beginning is ok, a bunch of shipwrecked people getting onto an abandoned oil rig. Ok that works. However it is a bit strange when they find the secret genetics lab and suddenly have advanced knowledge of what everything is. I'm sorry, I've been in advanced labs before and there is no way you can tell what is going on by looking at any of the machines.
I hesitate to criticize any of the science since this is a horror movie, not even science fiction. I will say though that if you want a monster that is trapped on an oil rig, don't say he has shark DNA. Last time I checked, sharks can both swim and breath underwater. In the last scene of the movie when the monster is revealed it has a shark head with gills. One simple line like "it lost its tolerance to sea water" would have explained everything. This could have been explained in the book, but it seems like it was sloppily handled in the movie. Furthermore, if your monster having shark DNA has nothing to do with the plot, DON'T KEEP TALKING ABOUT IT! The characters expound at great length that it's a shark but not once do any shark characteristics ever come up. Since the creature, named Charlie, can take on the human form of its victims it would have made more sense to say it was from an amoeba or a chameleon, or if they wanted to stick to the oceanic theme, maybe an octopus, it had enough tentacles.
Overall most of the complaints I have had can be chalked up to the old problem of converting a book to a movie, you have to cut out so much that often you leave out crucial details that make events understandable. But none of that is really that important. This is a horror movie, and it does pretty well at what it sets out to do. For a low budget film with no theater release the horror quality is surprisingly high. At one point while the characters are standing around talking there is a screen in the background showing footage from a security camera and a figure walks by. No one notices but it creates an incredible jolt from the audience. What I love about things like that is that it's not actually scary, but the atmosphere created by the movie makes it so. Jump scares are the lowest form of scare tactics in a movie but to scare the audience without a jump and a loud noise is difficult. There is also the convention of bodily takeover which is frightening. Charlie basically sucks out everything a person is including their memories to impersonate them and find new victims. This was the basic plot of The Thing however there the movie was about the mystery of finding the monster. In Proteus, the movie is more about figuring out that you're in a horror movie. This is why in The Thing the scare is that you don't know who the monster is. In Proteus, if you have half a brain, you will know every time someone is the monster, but it's the suspense that creates the fear. It's not as well done as Alien where you know everyone is going to die, you just don't know when, but for a low budget movie directed by a special effects artist the final product is quite enjoyable. On the subject of Alien, there is a direct reference where the creature implants itself into a sleeping person and kills them from the inside like a facehugger. Bob Keen also worked on that movie so its most likely not coincidence.
If you are not a fan of the horror genera this is still an enjoyable movie. It's not really gory from what I saw, probably because the makeup budget was spent on animatronics and puppets. These by the way are very entertaining. The whole movie leaves so many questions unanswered that it's half the fun to tear it apart looking for any explanation. I enjoyed this recommendation and I hope you do too.
Movies Referenced:
2008-The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
2007-Sunshine
2004-Proteus
2003-Proteus
1997-Event Horizon
1995-Proteus
1987-Hellraiser
1984-Dune
1984-The Never Ending Story
1983-Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi
1982-The Thing
1982-The Dark Crystal
1979-Alien
