Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

Somewhere in the big city the Chevy Nova, not the bastardized Toyota Corrola version of the Nova, but the big engine old school Nova, is snaking through traffic… looking… searching… hunting. Then the Nova, using its special, infrared NovaVision, spies its prey. Stupid teenagers. The thing is that Stupid Teenagers don’t know anything about classic muscle cars so they don’t pay the Nova any never mind, but slick, bright red Japanese Turbo rockets? Perfect bait. Yes, the Nova has just morphed itself. Say what?… So the Stupid Teenagers jump in, since the key is in the ignition, at least until they get in then all of the sudden there is no ignition no more. And no door handles. And no way to roll down the windows. Turns out this car is a hybrid, but it doesn’t use Ethanol… it runs on Human Flesh! Which makes it a ‘Super Hybrid’.

A few hours later, back to being a Chevy Nova and obviously buzzing off of whatever those Stupid Teenagers had taken, the car crashes itself and gets itself carted to the local police mechanic facility. This facility is in the process of getting rehabbed so it’s running off of a skeleton crew which includes Ray the asshole (Oded Fehr), Tilda the spunky resourceful final girl (Shannon Beckner) her nephew \ cousin Bobby (Ryan Kennedy) who is also Exposition Guy, Maria the slut goddess (Melanie Papalia), Gordy the Fat Guy (Adrien Dorval) and a couple of other dudes we’re not going worry too much about. And cell phone service is shoddy and Ray the Asshole has welded all the doors shut.  Because that makes total sense.

So one of those guys is missing, done in by the Nova which has repaired itself. Another guy is standing by the Nova when Tilda observes the car reach out its tendrils, suck this guy in and eat him. Tilda freaks out. Tilda tells Ray the Asshole that there’s a man-eating car driving around the garage. Ray thinks Tilda is nuts, until they meet the Man-Eating car and pop the hood. Let me tell you, that’s not any kind of small block 350 V-8 that I’m familiar with.

Now everybody knows that there’s a morphing man eating car monster driving around the garage, so what now? Get the f’out? Not so fast because Ray has a plan. Let’s catch

it and sell the story for a bunch of loot! Worst plan ever? Yes it is. Tilda would like to leave but her nephew, who has expositioned for us what this creature might be because he has the morphing, man eating car knowledge gene, wants in on the hunting action, thus Tilda has to stick around to keep an eye on him.

So now the plan is in full effect, which as you might imagine goes all to hell. Plus circumstance has made it impossible for our heroes to leave the garage even if they wanted to. And they want to, except for Ray who is still looking for his payday. Plus the morphing car is not only mean, but it’s pretty darned smart too. Not that this is going to stop Tilda, whose mighty upset right about now, from trying to kill it. Personally, I’d try to domesticate it. Think about it… I’d be pushing a new ride like every day.

‘Super Hybrid’. So I’m thinking that somebody was up late one night, stoned of course, watching ‘Bait Car’ and got to thinking ‘wouldn’t be cool if the bait car started just eating folks?’ and thus ‘Super Hybrid’ is born. And in all actuality, it is kind of cool. Kind of. Depending on how you look at it.

‘Super Hybrid’ reminds me a little of last year’s ‘Burning Bright’, while not as good or as tense as that movie, but both movies feature a couple of super fit final girls with a tendency to glisten, locked in close quarters with a damn near invulnerable beast, forced to think their way out of their impossible situations. The concept of the creature for this movie was a pretty clever one with its innate ability to mimic rich Corinthian leather and stuff, though Exposition Guy might’ve wanted to drop me a couple of lines about where the hell it came from as an addendum to his speech about what this thing could possibly be.

Shannon Breckner made for plucky and determined final girl, Oded Fehr is a veteran and had no problem playing Ray the Asshole and who provided a lot of comic relief with his intense assholery, and the rest of the cast did a fine job of getting in the way and dying respectfully.

If I had a few issues with ‘Super Hybrid’, one would be that the action sequences were a little off kilter at times with director Eric Valette unable to generate the high levels of tension that the chase sequences in a movie like this require to be completely effective. The action sequences weren’t terrible or anything, just not as crisp or as well executed as they needed to be. The creature was a little goofy looking and its intelligence level was slightly inconsistent. One on hand it seemed able to understand almost every instance of our heroes ultra lame plan, then on the other hand it was falling for some of the most rudimentary traps and tricks ever laid. Stupid monster. Another slight problem is that this is a Killer Car Movie and Killer Car movies, for whatever reason, are rarely any good. Even Christine with John Carpenter behind the wheel wasn’t all that good. And don’t get us started on ‘The Car’ which I believe our monster actually morphed into at one point during this movie.

However, despite the daunting task of making a Killer Car Movie halfway decent and some hiccups here and there ‘Super Hybrid’ was a fun little horror thriller.