KILLER INSTINCT

 

 

 

 

I was bummed when I discovered that KILLER INSTINCT wasn’t a movie about the video game of the same name.  It was one of my favorite games for the Nintendo 64, especially as I could achieve something like 41 hits on my opponent when I used the big ice guy Glacius, who looked like a walking glacier.  Man that was sweet.

 

 

 

 

 

What exactly the movie KILLER INSTINCT is about, I still can’t exactly figure out.  It starts off with a mass murder in a park.  Then it turns to a meat packing plant, where the ownership group which includes Corbin Bernsen meets with Dee Wallace.  Dee’s corporation is set to take over the factory, the lifeblood of the town.  The movie then splits off to the kids of the ownership group, who apparently mated with the Generic Stereotype Generator, which gave birth to shallow, one-note performances.  They head off to a mansion, where they fool around and someone with a kinky attitude and a penchant for sharp objects stalks and kills them.

 

Why does this flick want to be two separate movies from here?  I can’t say.  There’s a corporate power struggle that doesn’t belong in a slasher.  And there’s a slasher that doesn’t belong in a movie about corporate power struggles.  The script was co-written by Dee’s late husband Christopher Stone and Bruce Cameron, and I sincerely wonder if they wrote two different scripts and just jammed them together.

 

 

 

 

 

This would make sense if Stone wrote the corporate storyline, as Dee prominently features in it.  It’s nice to see her in a role of female empowerment, but if only the script gave her more to do.  Many of her scenes take place in a library, where she’s looking up old newspaper articles and doing other research about the plant.  As much as I love Dee Wallace, watching her sitting in a chair next to a card catalogue doesn’t do anything for me.  And I love libraries.  The first time I saw the six-story library during orientation at Stony Brook University, I literally fell to my knees.  I used to love spending my free hours among the thousands upon thousands of books.  There was a huge section devoted wholly to foreign translations.  Moby Dick in Russian.  My God.  With the advent of the iPad, I fear a day when libraries will no longer exist. It’ll be a sad day.

 

 

 

 

 

So far, I’ve spoken about an old video game and my love of books more than I have KILLER INSTINCT.  I could expound on amateurish acting, uninspired kill scenes matched by insipid sex scenes, and how the cinematography in Dee’s storyline is of much better quality than that in the mansion.  But I’d rather discuss stuff I actually like.

 

If you get the chance to play Killer Instinct Gold  on the N64, try it.  It’s a great game, and Glacius rules.  If you head into a library, take in the smell of books and enjoy the literature.  You’ll make me proud.  If you decide to do either of those instead of watching KILLER INSTINCT, I’ll applaud you.

 

 

 

 

 

–Phil Fasso