A team of soldiers is working in the woods doing something or another… I think they’re taking samples. A couple of them walk off on patrol, one of them being a cute little chickadee in fatigues, and her partner is feeling a little randy. Perhaps foot patrol in the middle of the woods at some unknown location isn’t the best time for a quickie, and Pvt. Perez let’s Marco know exactly how uncool that is. That damn Marco, I tell you. Good thing they didn’t get down in the woods because they are needed back at base because something is eating the other troops. It’s the Morlocks. It’s totally the Morlocks. Back at base, observing that their fellow comrades are a little beyond help, they do something odd. They grab this device and open a Stargate! Say what? Yup, that’s right. And Pvt. Perez and Marco might’ve survived the subsequent Morlock attack if their hummer had started up on ignition. You would think the U.S. Government would’ve had a mechanic give a vehicle traveling through time, through Stargate’s, a thorough once over, but there you go. The problem, as it were, is that the Stargate

opening device has been lost back where Marco and Pvt. Perez left it. That’s bad. That’s end of the world as we know it bad. The name of the movie is ‘Morlocks’, it’s a Sci-Fi Original, and it’s a monster movie with cut-rate CGI. I have personally asked them to stop doing this, but does anyone listen to me?

So this Stargate is a time machine and the government, yes the government, has sanctioned missions to go into the future and retrieve future tech to make us, The United States, more relevant again. Like I said, they were collecting samples like dirt and stuff, and I’d think that future dirt would be the same as present dirt, but what the hell do I know? Regardless, these actions sounds like some time shifting, paradoxical type stuff that should be all kinds of illegal, but you know how the government is. But with the Stargate device lost in the future, we need to send the device’s creator, Dr. James Radnor (David Hewlett) back to the future to get it. We would describe David Hewlett’s character,

but if you’ve seen him in a single episode of anything, you know what you’re getting. James doesn’t want to do this thing, but his adorable ex-wife Susan (Christina Cole) has talked him into it, sorta, but it’s the hardcore Army Colonel Wichita (Robert Picardo) that shames James into saving all of reality. Seriously, my man was about to walk out of the building and let us all die.

Headed by hardcore Capt. Finnis (Lincoln Frager), and with Cpl. Tyrell The Black Guy (Ray Fearon) on his wing… there are other soldiers but we’re going to conveniently not mention those red shirts… the skittish Dr. Radnor heads into the fissure warp, into Morlock land, to save the past which is our present. A couple of problems however. Col. Wichita is up to something that is slightly less than honest. It’s a just cause, but he’s mucking around with stuff that doesn’t need to be mucked with. Also, in this future, there these evil giant wingless chickens, and believe me when I tell you that the chickens of the future have completely turned the tables on us. Not this would stop me from frying one. Then there’s the team of soldiers that James lost about ten years ago. He thought they died in the early time travel trials, but nope, they just got sent to Morlock future, waiting around for somebody to rescue them. Chief among these is the insanely hot Sgt. Cortez (Marem Hassler) and Cpl. Tyrell has tagged this young woman as a Person of Interest. These future traveling soldiers pick the absolute worst times to hit on chicks. Oh, and Sgt. Cortez is an ‘impressive bitch’. That’s Cpl. Tyrell speaking, not me.

Thus with giant chickens to the left, Morlocks to the left and high above, a lunatic Army Colonel behind, and a broken Stargate in front letting all kind of future monsters into our present, the future of the planet earth is looking real bad. Or not, because… you know… we don’t want to spoil it for you.

Even though H.G. Wells is no doubt having all kinds of convulsions in his tomb, we did not hate Morlocks. For starters it’s a well acted piece, fully recognizing that David Hewlett playing a skittish scientist and Robert Picardo playing a stern authority figure wasn’t much of a stretch for either man, but you know out the gate that they are going to do this well. When David Hewlett lets that fake science roll off his tongue in the beginning of the movie, it’s almost pure magic because this cat can talk fake science about as well as anybody. While the melodrama between the characters of Susan and James was a bit painful, the relationship between Tyrell and Cortez actually worked a little bit, if for no other reason than Ray Fearon and Marem Hassler are very appealing actors. And if you like action in your movies, director Matt Codd stuffed more action and monster eating and giant chicken killing and exploding Morlock bodies than you can shake a stick at. Three minutes of David Hewlett talking fake science followed by 80 minutes of run, chase, shoot, blow up and get eaten. And it is because this movie had so much action and moved relatively quickly, the vast shortcomings of the story being told became way less prominent.

But my goodness was the CGI awful in this movie. I mentioned before in my ramblings about the previous Sci-Fi Original ‘Jabberwock’, which this was way better than, that if the Sci-Fi channel isn’t going to pony up the necessary funds to create passable CGI, then stop making movies that require it. Almost everything CGI related in this movie, from the monsters, to the explosions to the vehicles, to the copious blood splatter looked terrible. To the credit of director Matt Codd, he did his best to shield this oppressive shortcoming the best he could, but considering that nearly every scene had some kind of monster or explosion or blood splatter, it was a supremely difficult task.

I’m telling you, if this movie had just mediocre special effects then ‘Morlocks’ would have been some fine, completely mindless, nonsensical entertainment. But as it stands, considering that this is a special effects movie, ‘Morlocks’ turned out to be a less than fine, completely mindless, nonsensical semi-entertainment. Either make these things look better, or since I’m going to be unemployed soon, hire me as a high-paid consultant so we can fix this. Emphasis on High Paid.