Immortal (Ad Vitam) (2004)
The ancient gods have returned
I'd just like to go on the record and say I didn't do any research on this before watching it besides "will I need subtitles? No? Cool." I mean, science fiction! Something something Horus something something future something babies. I could make a comment here about it, but i think I'll make you read through it first to get to that comment.
In the future, people don't do it anymore - I guess. Everything is all bio-engineering and designer ro-bits and skin grafts. Sure, in modern times you might accentuate your looks with a leather coat or pleated skirts or whatever - but non of that is much of a deal when you can just make your face look like some cross between a lizard and rubber bands! A lady is picked up by the eugenics people, and she seems to have some pretty impressive powers of throwing telekinetic-like balls through people. Her "captors" don't much appreciated having chunks of them blown outwards, so they end up muzzling her and taking her back to the (for lack of better words) waiting room. From there, she gets picked up by a lady doctor who is really interested in her, and gets a job as a bit of a study into just what she is.
Floating around above the city is a pyramid however. In this pyramid are some Egyptian gods. Horus has been a bad boy, and has been given 7 days on the planet below before being locked up. While he's gallivanting around Bastet and Anubis get to just kill time playing all sorts of interesting things - like future Monopoly and future Uno. Horus has a mission however, as gods are prone to doing - to get himself some offspring. First trouble arrives in needing to find a suitable body to possess - a process that he spends quite a bit of time trying to do, only to have the possessed explode in rather messy fashions and getting the attention of the police. Of course, the police don't realize it's a god or anything, and instead spend time looking for a serial killer.
When a prison-storage-ship malfunctions and rains some cryopods from above, Horus finds a great host - albeit one missing a leg. We see in a quick exchange that the Eugenics folks aren't exactly on great terms with the police as far as black-ops go however, as they roll in and gun down the officers checking out the busted cryopods. Horus rescues the remaining pris-cicle as he's thawing out, and even fashions him an incredibly heavy iron leg, helping persuade the man that it's either share your body with Horus or bust. With that under way, Horus has a timer to go and find a certain pale-skinned blue haired woman (that just so happens to throw kinetic balls at people) and get with the baby making.
Agh! That's... that's not good at all. Time has savaged this.
Now, I don't really know why the plot is what it is. Honestly, I spent a good deal of this movie distracted by some other stuff that I'll get to in a moment - but really that synopsis up top is pretty much all I could get out of the movie. Segments are made rougher when the gods decide to not speak in English and the movie doesn't automatically have a subtitle on-screen to translate (for that matter, I didn't check to even see if turning subtitles on would have helped). Beyond that, there's something to do with the main lady being (assumingly) an immortal looking to become mortal, whom a shadowy figure that's believed to be some sort of alien is helping along in the process of doing so with some drugs, tail ended by Horus wanting kids and possessing a guy whose apparently a criminal and "knows things that could ruin everything" for the Eugenics folks - even though it's never really addressed after it's brought up. Yeah, it's a mess of things that aren't super-complex, but a bit shakey to follow as presented when combined with the next bit...
This is why so many people hate CG in movies. See, the thing about a physical prop is that although it might look terrible and you can see Godzilla's zipper, it's still a real thing and you can appreciate that. When you get to some rather dated looking CG like in this movie (which in all fairness at points looks more like it belongs on the Playstation original) things just spiral. I can deal with bad graphics in games and movies most the time - part of growing up on that sort of thing - but holy cow. To make it more mind boggling, we finally get to this red-skinned man-made hammerhead shark-monster and it looks as though it's totally a practical mask, even though every single one of the gods (who are nothing more than naked people with animal heads) are done in this less-than stellar CG, and even characters who could have easily just been a person done in makeup or a guy with a visor on are done likewise in this very dated graphical look.
Although it mostly looks pretty rubbish, I'll give credit where it's due in regards to the shark and iron leg. On top of that, although the presentation of the future isn't the highest in caliber, the vision isn't that bad. Interesting tidbits like flying cars that work on the equivalent of sky-based tram lines combined with some neat zero-g space sitting room scenes and the mixture of the gods and immortals and all the blending of those elements is pretty neat and somewhat imaginative. The movie also doesn't coddle the audience by just spitting out answers about everything as they see fit - heck, I still don't know what the heck that little booger-ghost delivering toothpaste is all about.
Looks incredibly practical - odd considering some of the other effects in this movie.
Really, I mean, it had it's moments as entertaining, but for the most part even when I knew what was going on I still ended up feeling lost through most of the movie. The rather dated CG doesn't help much in the awe factor to try and back things up, and it's hard to call just how much of it was well acted with all the confusion and strangeness of the setting itself. Although this one certainly doesn't come with any sort of recommendation to go out and seek it, I wouldn't go as far as to say to avoid it either - it has some interesting elements, even if the rest of the movie muddies it up. Still, in a pinch, I'd far rather watch something like The Fifth Element or even Gods of Egypt than this.