Automatons

The nature of low budget filmmaking often follows the rule of 80% where nothing happens and then they give it their all for the end. Automatons is no exception, really, but it does have a lot of things going for it. First of all, it's shot on super 8 (hooray!), has a great sound design with a cool look.

Most of the film takes place in one room with lots and lots of talking which sort tries your patience, admittedly. It's not that the story isn't interesting, but a girl talking to robots and Angus Scrimm's face on a TV for an hour doesn't necessarily make for a super compelling movie. But then we get a fun prolonged battle with toy robots [battle sounds] and that's when things pick up. I know it probably sounds like I was lukewarm on this, but it does have charm and despite being a real sum of its parts kind of thing, it did win me over at the end.

Movies of this nature are a real achievement because. . . there's a lot to overcome working with what you have and most of the time that's hardly anything at all. Sometimes you can only afford to have Angus Scrimm as a talking head and then you have to figure out how to have a robot battle.

Movies really are magic.

The robots are absurdly cute. They waddle around like wind-up toys or dented tin soldiers!

Automations is a very unique sci-fi film. The movie is about a lone survivor, the last of her kind. She lives with robots and continues the battle her people fought. The movie has a very unique appearance and design. It has a black and white, low budget look. I love the style. The movie is interesting. The disc looks good, but is hindered by the style in which it was shot. The disc has a good, lengthy documentary, some interviews and BTS footage. I love the look of the OCN slipcover. This one is different, but you may like it.

Stark imagery in this great slice of horror sci-fi

The trailer for AUTOMATONS looks great, and so do the screenshots. I love modern films shot on grainy 16mm black and white and this is even grainer, being shot on 8mm B&W. And while the look and design are similar to Darren Aronofsky's debut masterpiece PI, this movie just fails in everything else. There's not a lot of plot and still it's hard to follow. Most of the running time is spend on our female protagonist talking to her robots who go out every day to fight other robots and watching video broadcasts of Angus Scrimm talking endless Gibberish about the war and whatnot. It's so boring and never seems to end. Later there's some action outside and some suprising gore, but still I didn't care about any of the characters. Indie *** and owner of Glass Eye Pix Larry Fessenden shows up in a cameo.

Picture quality is great if you like this type of retro Sci-Fi. The extras are plentiful, but most is archival, uninteresting stuff.