I must admit that when I sat down to watch this one I was expecting nothing more than a SyFy Channel-level flick with crappy f/x, a silly one-note story, and wooden characters. And why wouldn’t I expect that? The movie is about surveillance cameras, originally designed to protect us, attacking and killing people. It has “SyFy” written all over it. I was in fact wondering why this hadn’t aired on that channel. But after watching it for only 10 minutes I soon realized that Eyeborgs is so much more than that.
And none of that is good.
We’re told that after another major terrorist attack on U.S. soil, the government initiates a wide-reaching and intense surveillance program by which every camera in the U.S. is linked to a single network called O.D.I.N (Optical Defense Intelligence Network). In other words, the U.S. government has created Big Brother … no; not that crappy reality show but the Orwellian society where everyone is being watched at every point of the day in every thing they do.
Enter Adrian Paul, playing R.J. Reynolds, an agent for Homeland Security. Along with a reporter, played by Megan Blake, and Jarett, the nephew of the President, they become entangled in a plot to assassinate President Hewes. It seems someone has hacked into the O.D.I.N system and is programming the surveillance cameras (some which are small, others which look like huge spiders) to kill people who are getting too close to the truth. Think Chopping Mall with elements of Runaway with a tiny sprinkle of The Terminator and you come close to Eyeborgs (which still gives it too much credit).
Let’s take a break to explore that paragraph. There are two pieces of information that we can gather:
- Nothing good has ever come from Adrian Paul entering it.
- Chopping Mall plus anything will always yield a negative sum.
Eyeborgs is not a straight-to-video answer to Blade Runner, Total Recall or Minority Report, its more of a low rent version of Paycheck, complete with a confusing action scenes, and a twist ending you’ll see coming a mile away. Director Richard Clabaugh is clearly trying to ape Paul Greengrass’ Bourne look, but the look here constantly draws attention to itself. The arbitrarily wiggling camera is enough to drive anyone insane.
It’s a low budget feature, plain and simple. The colors reflecting from the machines feel “off,” and some of the robots appear to be two-dimensional sprites instead of 3D during the rescue scene. If I was a nice man, I’d say it’s probably a result of being rushed to video. But I’m not, and it’s not. As to be expected, Eyeborgs just doesn’t quite live up to its ingeniously goofy title and concept. The film is rarely expressly good, but fails to be more than moderately entertaining even at its best.
Phew, this has been one rough month of bad movies.