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Monday, July 29, 2019

The Terror Experiment (2010)




I don’t often get really pissed off at a movie, but The Terror Experiment is one that pushed my buttons and seriously crosses over a line. I’ll explain that later in the review, but before I get to it let me talk a little bit about the plot.

We meet a man that is part of an organization that is trying to expose the bad things that the government does which includes developing chemical weapons to drop on enemy troops. The most reasonable way to make everyone aware of this secret is to bomb a Federal Building causing the release and infection of hundreds of innocent people. Tossed into this is Cale, the I.T. guy who is trapped above the deadly gas covering the lower floors of the building with some other survivors. He is worried about his ex-wife and daughter who are on the floors below his. Some predictable stuff happens, like a doctor who is up to no good and a punk that makes a break for it and gets himself killed. Oh, and there are some evil government guys that are trying to cover everything up.

Let me begin with the traditional review and the reasons that this isn’t a good movie. First up it is far too ambitious for the budget. This leads to the overuse of CGI to accomplish explosions, crashes, and a building imploding that looks terrible. They had a budget of five million dollars so there was some money to be spent, but not enough to pull off this story. They try the trick of having the news fill in the details to give the movie a bigger scale, but they didn’t spend any cash to make it look good. It appears as if they used the A/V equipment from a mid-eighties high school to shoot the stuff. It’s a total fail.

I wish that were the only problem. If they had a decent and coherent plot this movie could still have been okay. Sadly, it is like they read the playbook for every horror survival flick ever made and created a checklist of what they had to have. Like I’ve already mentioned you have the hero, Cale, trying to save his daughter. There is also the punk kid and the science guy up to shenanigans. We also get the “I didn’t like you but now I’m your love interest” generic female character and a cowardly fat guy that is… cowardly and fat. Seriously there isn’t a single unique or well thought out character in the entire movie.

It is clear that they spent a few bucks to get some known “B” list actors to appear. Judd Nelson, Robert Carradine, C. Thomas Howell, and Jason London have decent parts. All of them are wasted with a script that has nothing going for it. I keep saying in my reviews the one thing filmmakers have in their complete control is making sure they have a script and story that is engaging and worth watching. This is very disappointing because they had some money and blew it with this mess.

Clearly, we have a bad movie and if I’m being honest the adjective that I want to use is shitty. The Terror Experiment is awful, but I’ve seen a lot of movies like this. What makes me hate the movie is how it refers to real life tragedies to try and create a conspiracy. They make some pretty disturbing and callous references to both the Oklahoma City bombing as well as 9/11 in some attempt to prove how bad the government guys really are. I’m not going to repeat the dialogue or go into any detail because it is just too obnoxious to repeat. Guys if you want to make a crappy horror movie have at it. But if you do please keep your conspiracy theories to yourself and for the love of God don’t try to cash in on actual tragedies to sell your garbage film.

The Terror Experiment is a lousy movie that is also offensive and disgusting, but not in the good ways that we horror fans dig. Pass on this one…


© Copyright 2019 John Shatzer

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