Sick Product of a Sick System

From my favorite movies..

Disturbing yet enthralling

Amateur movie with Big budget

Having seen all 4 films in the series, I can say this one is the worst of them. There is so much wrong with it, I don't even know where to start. Let me point out at least some of the flaws.The first thing to make me suspicious were the many titles of this film. My copy was called "Shadowchaser: The Gates of Time", even though no time travel and no gates were involved. Probably the best one would have been "Orion's Key".The plot is a convoluted mess. There are two archaeologists (a married couple) looking for something in Africa. Just when they are about to give up, they find the Key and despite having any clue as to what is really is, they immediately know it's important and they must not give it to anybody. They have a son, who's in hospital, because his mother was a reckless driver (I will get to her later). So they contact some university professor, who hires mercenaries (because all professors have those on their speed dials) and orders them to retrieve the Key at any cost (because all professors do that, right?). The artifact also awakens an alien android (or what exactly he is supposed to be) and hijinks ensue (wild car chases, gunfights, explosions, you name it).I understand that script re-writes can make more damage than good, but that does not excuse the sloppy writing and horrible lines in this film. Words fail me how terrible the lines are. It feels as if the script was written by a ten-year-old who had just seen Alien and Terminator and liked Zagarino's hairstyle.The acting is beyond redeemable. Especially the female lead Jennifer MacDonald. I don't know whether it was an intention to make her character so annoying and unlikeable, but they sure succeeded. There were moments when her delivery and her acting were so bad I wanted to punch my TV. She's the perfect definition of a self-centred arrogant bitch. She would rather have her husband killed by Zagarino than give up the Key (which she has no way of knowing what it is for).But the worst for me was the whole concept of Shadowchaser. The producers had a great character on their hands, but didn't know what to do with it. In the first and second instalments he was a renegade android created by the government. OK, no problem there, sounds like fun. In the third film he was a .... well, I think a Russian android that went banana because of some virus or something. It's not clearly explained in the film. And now in the final film he is an alien cyborg warrior, a protector of his species whose sole job is to prepare some elixir. It's sad, real sad, that this was the final film and his character didn't get a proper closure.So, do I recommend it? Only if you are a die hard Zagarino fan or a completist like me. Otherwise don't bother with it, there's really nothing to see here.

Oh God! Where to start?Africa a couple of thousand years ago: Natives dance and beat drums. Aliens arrive in a huge disco-light and are greeted by the chief. The aliens present their half of a weird key and obtain something from a mysterious underground chamber. As they take off the ship is struck by lightning and crashes. Kaboom! Africa the present day: A husband wife archaeological team are digging the remains of an ancient hill top site. The husband is convinced aliens visited the place many years ago. The wife is sceptical. The husband goes to visit their photogenically dying son in hospital. The wife finds half of the the mysterious maguffin alien key. She faxes a scan of it to her evil boss (we know he's evil because he's got a beard) before driving to meet her husband. Deep underground in the remains of the space ship, one of the alien droids wakes up and sets off in pursuit - stopping only to learn English by reading the label on the bottom of a fax machine and donning a nifty flowing coat that just happens to be his size.Lady archaeologist is attacked by droid. Lady Archeolgist escapes. Lady archaeologist tries to deliver maguffin to Evil boss's henchman but sees droid and runs away. From here to end of movie car chases, guns, and explosions in random order until everyone ends up in another mysterious underground chamber just like the first one (they built a spare?) where the maguffin key thing turns sunlight and cave water into THE ELIXIR! More shooting. All the bad guys die. Alien droid finds his home planet is no more and gives THE ELIXIR to the archaeologists to cure their photogenically dying child. Roll Credits. Take DVD out of player. Throw DVD in dustbin. The End.Dumb dumb movie. Which is a pity. The camera work and locations were great, some of the acting was adequate. Someone spent some money on this. But the script? Oh so bad bad bad bad bad it was beyond a joke. No one could deliver that stuff.!Stupid unanswered questions include (amongst many many others):How did the lady archaeologist send the email? Every time she tried to call anyone local over the windup telephone we had an 'amusing' interlude with the ineffectual local operator, and her rustic plug and wire switchboard, yet emails zip across the world to evil masterminds in seconds, complete with colour graphics and computery pinging noises.How can hired killer goons miss EVERYTHING they shoot at even armed with automatic weapons? (Mild mannered archaeologists, on the other hand, can knock people dead from vast distances with one shot from vintage service revolvers they've just picked up.)How did an Alien race capable of interstellar travel manage to get anywhere with shuttle ships that fall out of the sky when struck by lightning? Normal commercial civil jets are usually struck about once a year, which amounts to about once every 3,000 flying hours, and will frequently trigger lightning by flying through clouds. Pretty dumb bunch of aliens. Very dumb movie. It lowered my IQ by several points.

I got this on a double-sided DVD with "Alien blood", despite this movie obviously having 100 times the budget of Alien blood, this is obviously the inferior film. There are some entirely idiotic moments here, the whole scene in the Market had me wanting to hammer the screen in, HOW can people just fail to communicate (the woman just runs away without saying anything to her husband!). And the guy they where going to give the 'artifact' to, honestly, what would you do if two people came to give you something then ran into a market. Would you assume they had just gone to buy some bottled water for the trip? or would you hunt them down and shoot them?. Then there is the dodgy 'Alien' robot who is just like the Terminator. And there was something about a life-preserving "Elixir" in there somewhere, but my mind had turned to mush by that point. Oh and the utterly stupid 'twist' ending that had me howling with laughter...

Okay. It was Saturday afternoon. I was on the computer. I rented a string of sci-fi films and when this one came on, I actually got involved in it. I cared about Todd and jennifer, the main actors. They had good chemistry. I realize the plot was not rocket science but I didn't miss it. We had your archeology-type couple embroiled in something they unwittingly stumbled upon. Your bad guy, your alien, your neck breaking pace - hey it was fun...................