Hybrid

Hollywood has long been obsessed with cars – as anyone who’s seen The Fast And The Furious, or any of its similarly monikered sequels can attest. World cinema, too, has a healthy regard for automobile movies – with Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive wowing cinemagoers in 2011 and Luc Besson’s Taxi spawning multiple sequels. The latest off the production line is Hybrid. This is a car movie with a twist – the car is not a car at all…

It’s evening in an unnamed city as two inebriated teenagers stumble from a club. Spotting a shiny red sports car, they take a closer look only to find the keys in the ignition. Jumping in, they are about to take the vehicle for a spin when the central locking kicks in and the ignition disappears. As panic sets in, they realise they will never escape – and their pained expressions are plastered against the windscreen as the killer car begins to digest them.

The vehicle is a biological/mechanical hybrid capable of shifting shape – and is hungry for human flesh. After a head on collision which sees it suffer huge damage, it is towed to a multi-story repair shop where it begins to feed on mechanics and staff in a bloodthirsty killing spree.

Capable of repairing itself and mutating into various makes and models, the hybrid is a deadly and cunning enemy. Can the motley crew of garage workers escape with their lives and defeat their mysterious enemy?

Killer car movies have been done before. It doesn’t bode well for this release that it can’t even decide what it’s called. Referred to as Hybrid (in the movie’s credits) and Super Hybrid everywhere else, this is a film which seems to have no idea what it really wants to be. It’s been released previously, retro-fitted into 3D, and has now made its way to home audiences. But is it an exploitation flick? A B-movie? Horror? Sci-fi? It’s none or all of these at once – a confusing mish-mash which fails abysmally to meet its ambitious aims.

It’s difficult to know where to begin with this film’s myriad flaws. Everything about Hybrid is truly appalling: the acting, the characterisation, the action, the dialogue, the direction, the special effects… Perhaps the one redeeming feature of the movie is that it’s easy to laugh at it – although it’s a film which takes itself far too seriously for the comedy to be intentional.

The scene is set early on when the killer car in question devours the drunken partygoers. Featuring some of the shonkiest dialogue ever committed to celluloid, the episode carries absolutely no sense of threat, despite the fact that it’s clear the shape-shifting vehicle will prove to be a carnivorous car. In fact, it’s a blessing when the irritating duo are devoured.

From here, the handbrake is loosened and things rapidly run even further downhill. After the murderous automobile arrives in the garage, we are quickly introduced to the most contrived and clichéd collection of characters ever assembled: a no-good sleazy boss; a feisty female mechanic; her bookish but handsome nephew; a buxom secretary; and a selection of nobodies destined never to make it to the latter stages.

It’s no exaggeration to say that every single stereotype is filled by a truly woeful actor. Admittedly, they are given little to do with their one-dimensional parts, but the performances are wooden at best. The biggest name in the cast (Oded Fehr of The Mummy) is the worst of all. His face is practically immobile, his voice inexpressive – it’s a supremely lazy show from an actor who seems to think the role beneath him: on the basis of Hybrid, he’ll be lucky if he ever gets a part even as poor as this again.

Of course, the disposable cast would be little more than an irrelevance if the villain of the piece was convincing. It isn’t. There’s nothing threatening about a car which can change shape (as Michael Bay has so ably illustrated) – especially this one. Its main weapon appears to be trapping people’s ankles in its doors or locking them inside: hardly the stuff of nightmares. Beneath the bonnet lurks a writhing mass of blue CGI snakes which look as convincing as one of Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion Medusas. In an era where Gareth Edwards can make the superb Monsters on a budget of £28.60, there is simply no excuse for such poor visual effects.

Various car/motorbike chases ensue as the survivors of the vehicular onslaught try to avoid being crunched beneath the ‘monster’s’ wheels – most of them driving directly through the enormous and inexplicable plot holes. One particularly absurd contrivance concerns an escape route being welded shut and being impossible to open – despite said door being in a motor repair shop filled with acetylene torches and cutting equipment.

After forty minutes, it seems sure the game is up and the plot is set to be resolved (thanks to some honkingly poorly scripted exposition from the resident bookworm), but director Eric Valette is not content to let things lie. Instead, he simply reproduces much of the earlier in action in some repetitive and uninspired scenes. Make no mistake: this is an action packed film. But that doesn’t stop it being jaw-droppingly dull.

There are dozens of films available which are ‘so bad they’re good’. Rest assured that this is not one of them. Perhaps if Hybrid stuck its tongue further into its cheek, ramped up the gore, or just stopped taking itself so seriously, it might be a fun way to spend ninety minutes. As it is, it makes for painful viewing. Avoid at all costs.