Directed by Charles Band (Full Moon Productions), Quadrant is a step away from the campy fun he usually represents. Instead, it shows us the dangers of virtual reality. Is virtual reality possible someday? Probably when we are all in the ground. Facing reality takes a lot of effort for me. I don’t think I would like the idea very much. It is bizarre to see a somewhat serious movie. I love Full Moon Productions; they gave us Puppet Master. I even use his films as a background when I write about the man who brought us Gingerdead Man, Evil Bong, and countless others.

Synopsis

The Quadrant helmet allows you to sit in virtual experiences, even death. It makes your worst fears come alive. However; people are stronger in the Quadrant. If they face their fears and win, the fear will be gone. The Quadrant is tested to it’s full ability and fired back when Erin arrives and begins to thirst for the experience, after several sessions. Erin (Shannon Barnes) witnesses the power of death and takes it a bit too far when she starts killing people off in a real world. Creators scramble to get the issue fixed but it is too late, Erin was on her own killing spree. A brand new Jack the Ripper.

Here’s a look at the official poster art.

A History

If you look at Charles Band’s credits, he has been doing this a long time. Dozens if not Hundreds of movies that helped some of us relied on in our dark times, just for a cheap laugh so we can feel better. Quadrant, however, is like a freight train coming right for you. This movie is the real deal when it comes to B-grade film. It confuses me sometimes, knowing that Charles Band can flip a switch and make a somewhat serious movie with a great plot.

The filming locations were excellent. I felt like I was living in the helmet; that’s how much the movie entranced me. It raises the question, “How far do we want to go with science?” Where will the obsession go when we stop paying attention? It tries to bully us into facing our fears and criticisms. But seeing it enough would bore me for sure. How far can you go? Will there be education? Although the movie was great, there were some confusing moments, and it starts with a big scene followed by Erin’s introduction.

In The End

I won’t spoil the movie because if you have seen it once, you’ll see it a few more times. It is enjoyable and exciting. The cast did their best, and the film turned out well. If this movie taught me anything, it’s that I am interested in seeing all the work being put out. With a legendary director, the movie made its mark on me. Charles Band has been an idol since his movies were almost all “straight to video” releases, and I loved finding random movies in the 90’s. It was a much better time.

This movie reminds me of all those moments of happiness I sought out in my darkest areas; it helped me ride the wave after a bad couple of weeks. I survived on Charles Band movies because they irritate people, not out of spite; it’s about being able to enjoy something, even if everyone else thinks you’re weird.

Quadrant will be heading to theaters on April 23 2024

(Contains spoilers about a certain cameo.)

A case could be made that Fede Alvarez’s Alien: Romulus
is the third-best film of the nine movies to feature the infamous xenomorphs (with
the prequel Prometheus being the only one not to name-check them in the
title). Romulus, which is positioned as a “side-quel” set in between Alien
and Aliens, eschews some of the more ambitious plotting that
characterized the least-popular franchise entries in favor of a straightforward
narrative. Alvarez, obviously an Alien devotee, opts for an Alien/Aliens
“greatest hits” approach replete with Easter Eggs and instances of fan service.
It mostly works although the tension never quite escalates to the levels
reached by Ridley Scott’s original and James Cameron’s even-better direct
follow-up.

The time-frame is 20 years after the xenomorph rampaged
through the Nostromo before being blown out the airlock by Ripley. (This
event is explicitly referenced although Ripley is not named.) The body of the
alien is retrieved and brought on board the space station Romulus/Remus
for experimentation. Shortly thereafter, we are introduced to several workers
toiling away terraforming a rather inhospitable planet. Rain (Cailee Spaeny),
who has been harboring dreams of escaping the dreary world for someplace where
the sun shines, discovers that the Wayland-Yutani Corporation has unilaterally
changed her quota, pushing back her date-of-freedom for at least a half-dozen
years. Following this betrayal, she and her synthetic surrogate brother Andy
(David Jonsson) decide to join a small group of friends – her ex-boyfriend
Tyler (Archie Renaux), his sister Kay (Isabela Merced), her cousin Bjorn (Spike
Fern), and Bjorn’s girlfriend Navarro (Aileen Wu) – in an audacious scheme to
free themselves of Wayland-Yutani’s yoke.

Tyler and Bjorn have discovered the derelict Romulus/Remus
in high orbit above the planet and intend to take a small spacecraft to the
space station to salvage the cryostasis chambers that will allow them to travel
to a distant colony. Initially, things go as planned but, once the group boards
the station, it becomes clear that things did not go well for the previous
crew. The only “survivor” is the partially destroyed synthetic, Rook (which
uses the voice and image likeness of Ian Holm), who serves the Prime Directive
dictated by the Company. When an accident triggers the revival of a group of
facehuggers from their stasis pods, the stage is set for an impregnation and,
as always happens in an Alien movie, the subsequent “birth” results in a
fight-or-flight struggle for life between disadvantaged humans and the “perfect”
killing machine. In this case, as in Aliens, there’s more than one.

Some of the best bits of Romulus are direct
references to the beloved first two Alien films (although Alvarez also provides
more obscure callbacks to Prometheus, Alien: Covenant, and even the two
other sequels). Alvarez, a horror director by trade (having previously made Don’t
Breathe and the Evil Dead remake), knows how to set up a tensely
creepy scene (there are several of these, some involving facehuggers and/or the
mature alien) but isn’t as good when it comes to character development. One
area where both Alien and Aliens succeeded was in fleshing-out
secondary characters that would eventually become xenomorph-fodder. In Romulus,
the four supporting humans are paper-thin with one or two recognizable traits
each. Only Rain and Andy (and the relationship between them) seem worth the
screenplay’s time.

Set design establishes the divided space station Romulus/Remus
as another consistent module in the universe established by Scott and
embellished by Cameron. Everything here feels “lived-in” and borrows its aesthetic
not only from the previous Alien films but from the TV science fiction
series The Expanse. Creature appearance is faithful to that of
H.R. Giger’s original monsters with one new design. The decision to use Ian Holm’s
likeness (made with the agreement and cooperation of the actor’s family) is a
mixed bag. The way it’s used, for a half-destroyed android, diminishes some of
the downfalls of a CGI image recreation but it remains a distraction.

Cailee Spaeny, the young actress blazing a trail through Hollywood
(recent credits include Civil War and the title role in Priscilla),
fashions a character who’s more than a “poor man’s Ripley” but less than a
force of nature. It’s impossible not to compare her to Sigourney Weaver but
that feels unfair. (Ripley, for example, received most of her development in Aliens
– for the majority of Alien, she was part of the ensemble.) Spaeny does
what she needs to do in providing viewers with a port of entry into this world.
Her relationship with Andy, a glitchy synthetic refurbished by her father, is
more touching than any of the human/human pairings in Romulus.

Is Alien: Romulus the Alien film fans have
been craving since Ripley, Hicks, and Newt entered their cryo-sleep in 1986? Perhaps.
It contains most of the requisite elements and, if it doesn’t measure up to the
high standard established by Scott (who has a producer credit) and Cameron (who
provided suggestions to Alvarez), that’s only to be expected. It’s a good
showcase for the xenomorph in its various permutations and a solid horror/suspense
movie in its own right. The open question is whether it will reinvigorate the franchise
after numerous misfires and cash-grabs. Only time (and the box office) will
tell.

Alien: Romulus (United States, 2024)

Director Austin Peters makes his narrative feature debut with “Skincare,” a slice of nasty L.A. noir set within the beauty industry, starring Elizabeth Banks as a celebrity aesthetician whose reputation crumbles around her over the course of two weeks. The film calls to mind other dark, salacious thrillers that satirize a city seemingly obsessed with image — think of “Nightcrawler” or even “American Gigolo” — and Peters wields the style and tone of this subgenre with skill.

The sunbaked Los Angeles of “Skincare” is not the glowing, golden fantasy that we often seen on screen, an impossibly beautiful escapist fantasy. No, the light in “Skincare” is harsh and revealing: bright UV rays, fluorescent bulbs and neon signs beating down on the face of Hope Goldman (Banks), a facialist with a high-profile client list who’s on the verge of breaking through to the big time with her own skincare line.

Hope has been desperate to keep up appearances with her product launch, taping a TV segment that she expects will catapult her into fame and fortune, but as we come to find out, her finances are in disarray. She’s behind on the rent for her storefront and spa in the iconically kitschy Crossroads of the World complex in Hollywood, and when a competing aesthetician, Angel (Luis Gerardo Méndez), sets up shop on her turf, an already frazzled Hope begins to unravel.

But Hope’s undoing isn’t entirely her fault: A mysterious stalker simultaneously starts to interfere with her reputation, sending creepy texts with videos of Hope attached, hacking her email and slashing her tires. Hope turns to her only allies, a group of lecherous men that includes a TV news anchor (Nathan Fillion), her mechanic (Erik Palladino) and a new friend, Jordan (Lewis Pullman), a young, amped-up life coach.

“Skincare” becomes a two-hander, alternating between the floundering Hope and the equally flailing Jordan, who desperately wants to be seen as a hero to her. Pullman is delightfully slimy as an unhinged delusional narcissist, high on his own supply of motivational word salad that he spews into his laptop camera. He’s a descendant of Tom Cruise’s “Magnolia” character Frank T.J. Mackey, but with all the wits of one of Michael Bay’s lunkheaded “Pain & Gain” crew.

Banks, on the other hand, brings a flinty mean streak to the striving Hope. Though she’s a victim here, she’s not entirely sympathetic and Banks tiptoes that fine line carefully. There’s a dash of schadenfreude here, since she cares more about what people think and how she looks than anything else. Her own assumptions and accusations add to the pile-up of miscommunication that lead to destruction in “Skincare.”

Banks’ and Pullman’s deliveries of these tragicomic characters elevate what could have been merely a genre exercise into something more fascinating and satirical. The script, written by Peters with Sam Freilich and Deering Regan, is less interesting. The coincidences and twists fit together, but there’s no deeper reason why this story had to be set in the beauty industry except that it’s a business built on facade, fantasy and seeming frivolity. “Skincare” doesn’t dig into any of these themes in a significant way. There is also no discernible reason why this story is set in 2013, except that it makes it feel slightly dated and cheesy; the diegetic Maroon 5 and Katy Perry songs that weave throughout the movie give it an ironic humor and sense of time, but this film did not have to be a period piece.

Despite his screenplay’s limitations, Peters (like Hope) is a master of aesthetics and with cinematographer Christopher Ripley and editor Laura Zempel, he‘s crafted a compellingly sleazy ‘80s-style thriller — or at least a convincing facsimile of one. The story may be only skin-deep, but Banks and Pullman find something truthfully hopeless in these surface pleasures.”

Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.