Canonically
terrible movies don’t necessarily start that way. Some begin passably enough
and only gradually fall apart. Some flip a switch, the drop in quality hilariously
fast and shocking. Replicas, a cheap sci-fi thriller directed by Jeffrey
Nachmanoff and starring Keanu Reeves, is the kind of terrible movie that doesn’t
manage to get through scene one without doing something wrong. A scroll through
its page on Rotten Tomatoes shows near-universal exhaustion and disdain
among those pesky reviewers: important clues for ridonculous movie adventurers such
as myself. I was amused but also fascinated. Terrible movies can put in sharp
relief how much a good filmmaker does right.
Awestruck
string music typically plays when something uncanny is depicted onscreen:
superpowers, futuristic technology, alien cities, and the like. It’s the
musical equivalent of the oohs and aahs that are the desired audience response.
Usually I barely notice the convention. However, I noticed it here because it perplexed
me, playing while neuroscientist William Foster (Reeves) does nothing more than
swipe at a screen. The screen is projected onto the air, which is slightly if
unimaginatively advanced, I suppose. But it’s hard to tell what this is
accomplishing with regard to his experiment to transfer a dead person’s
consciousness to a robot seated before him. Taken by itself, the visual effect
doesn’t appear much different than playing Woodoku on a phone. When the
transfer is complete and the robot comes to life (briefly, so to speak), it may
as well have been done using Claymation, so jarring is the chintzy artifice.
Keanu
Reeves, one of the greatest action stars of all time, isn’t the center of the
action but the drama. Without explosions and gun-fu, he never quite comes off
right: impassive, muted, awkward, tone-deaf. Consider the scene after the
opening. The experiment is botched. Afterward, William's boss tells him the
program is soon to be shut down and he’ll be out of a job. “This is my life’s
work,” William says flatly. It soon ends with him saying “oh shit” and running out
the door, as if he accidentally left the stove on. One would expect him to be
radiating misery and preoccupation, unless he’s a more optimistic or eccentric
or slippery sort. But no, the crumbling of his life’s work simply appears to be
of little consequence.
He
arrives home to his wonderful family as they prepare for a trip. He and his
wife, Mona, played by Alice Eve, have a conversation about…the morality of
William’s work, I believe. (It goes by in an instant and is as quickly
forgotten by everyone involved, audience included.)
The
family is on the road when a storm breaks out and they’re nearly hit by an
oncoming truck. Mona suggests getting off the road to wait it out. William
ignores her, as if he’s driving alone. Moments later the car hits a fallen tree
branch and careens through a barrier and over the side of a cliff, into a body
of water. Everyone dies except William who, aside from some blood splashed on
his forehead (possibly not even his), is completely unscathed. The normal
reaction would be to call for emergency medical care. Silent anguish. Crippling
guilt. Maybe tears. But William, previously displaying no signs of madness,
sees an opportunity in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy to experiment on
his family and turn them into clones. He calls an assistant from his
laboratory, Ed, to come and help him, no questions asked. When the assistant,
played by Thomas Middleditch (an actor I've since found was accused of sexual
misconduct) arrives and learns what’s going on, he suggests calling “the police
or somebody.” After this bit of token resistance, he agrees to drag four dead
bodies from the site of an accident in the middle of a stormy night and
transport them to William’s house.
Ed:
“What if something horrible happens?”
William: “Who gives a fuck?”
That’s
not what William says but I feel it better reflects the movie’s attitude toward
the implications of his experiments.
Ed,
again with no further resistance, goes on to commit another major crime by
stealing technology worth millions of dollars (and somehow walking out with it)
and setting it up in William’s basement. But there aren’t enough vats for every
member of his family, so he’s forced to choose one of his children to leave out
of the experiment, though not before trying to delegate the terrible decision
to his assistant, who refuses, finally putting his foot down in this one minor
matter. And that’s not enough for one night! William also decides it’s a bad
idea to preserve the memory of his youngest daughter in the rest of his
family’s minds, so he deletes her in them and sets about erasing any evidence
of her existence in the house.
The
next morning, Ed, somehow rested and rather unshaken, leaves saying, “good
luck.” Just another end of the day at the office.
And
so on through nearly two hours.
All action thrillers contain a measure of absurdity, which is either part of the fun or beside the point. Take, for example, another Keanu Reeves movie I watched on Tubi recently, Speed (1994). Absurd in many ways yet there’s balance, as it does a number of things successfully, by standard measures: A memorably over-the-top concept (a bus armed to blow up if its speed dips below 50 mph). Surprise casting (Jeff Daniels as a cop, huh. Dennis Hopper, what the? Cameron! [Alan Ruck.] The guy [Carlos Carrasco] from Blood In, Blood Out! aka Miguel’s Citizen Kane). Charming side characters, who eventually turn the speeding bus into an impromptu party to celebrate ingeniously averting death repeatedly, a mood that infects the viewer. In a vivid, sprawling Los Angeles, CA. Sustained tension, even as the movie gets more and more pleasurably absurd. And Keanu Reeves at his best. It was only during this latest viewing that I remembered how the villain, an elderly man whose revenge motive doesn’t make a whole lot of sense (though what sense did the Unabomber make?), who’s somehow planting sophisticated bombs in conspicuous locations unassisted and largely undetected, is otherwise knowledgeable of every single move the police make to stop him, asks for a surprisingly unsupervillainous sum—a few million dollars, to support himself adequately in his old age—and is fooled by false bills that burst blue paint in his face. (The canvas bag they’re contained in doesn’t have a $ sign on it.) Perhaps this is true of other such action movies, but especially here one can imagine, at least vaguely, easier, less costly ways to resolve this situation. Instead, the crazed bombing campaign and the operation to stop him causes extraordinary chaos, including: countless car accidents on the freeway, a destroyed bus, a destroyed passenger plane, and a subway train wreck. Mass injuries, lives lost, 8- or 9-figure property damage! It was costly but it was, by conventional measures, an adventure. Neither can be said of Replicas. The concept is basic sci-fi. Everything else about it tips entirely toward (pleasurable, unplanned) absurdity, placing it firmly in the category of the ridonculous: Its attempts to establish tension. Its indifference toward logic and moral conflicts and probably sound science. Its special FX and action. Its practically non-existent characters. Best of all, those constant twists, up to the very last image.
Ed
the assistant (his life!) says: “Let’s pump the brakes on the crazy train.”
First of all: This is about 45 minutes into the movie, well after departure.
Second: It's a crazy train. There are no brakes on a crazy train. The ride
ends, as Keanu Reeves showed us decades ago, when you run out of track.
