A maintenance crew headed by Tom Sizemore goes into an abandoned hospital to look for old equipment to sell to collectors. But a multi-millionaire has a scientist in the catacombs under the hospital, who has developed a serum to cause rapid regeneration and cellular growth. The scientist, who has taken the serum, is finding the results to be a bit more extreme than expected.
For my beef with 235 films (who produced this), see my review for "The Mad". This film's selling point was easy to identify as soon as I picked it up: it has Tom Sizemore in it. And, hey, I like Tom Sizemore (rent "Lock Up" with Sylvester Stallone) so this seems like something worth checking out.
That selling point is about as far as you can get with this one. You have a very one-dimensional millionaire who survives a fire. A creature in a tunnel who becomes part rat and part dog. A bum who is apparently a Rastafarian. These things mix well, surprisingly, but only in the most absurd sense of the word "well". It's just a lot of strange things going on.
The crew's background is in makeup, and it shows. There is a scene where they chop off a guy's fingers that was alright, and the creature is especially slimy. But the creature is just poorly conceived: in horror, there needs to be a balance of how much you do and do not show a monster. Here, they couldn't decide to show him too little (much of the film is almost pitch black) or too much (making him seem somewhat dumb).
I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy this film. I did. But the actors were nothing special, I didn't care about the characters, and Sizemore is either doped up or washed up in this film. Maybe he's not doped up. But whatever the case, he just looked old and tired. I can't have my hero looking like he wants to drink a six-pack of Coors Original (the Banquet Beer), smear Dorito orangeness on his chest and pass out watching NASCAR. This Sizemore didn't even have enough energy in him to pass gas.
I guess this isn't really telling you what you need to know, but there's really nothing to know: bad hero, weak monster, fake secondary characters. Unless your goal is to just get drunk or high and need something on the screen to move every so often, this isn't going to thrill you. If you want a good underground monster, rent "Tremors" or "CHUD".
