Narcosys (2000)
Nomination Year: 2012
SYNOPSIS: [Kevin's review of the movie]
Narcosys is sort of an Australian epilepsy test masquerading as a movie. The stated plot is not really what happens, so much as an excuse for the director to show violence and flashing lights, interspersed with some of the most painfully pointless dialogue known to man or beast (I would tell you to think Tracy & Hepburn by way of Beavis & Butthead, but even that doesn't truly convey the flavor).
The movie begins with a quick summary of the main characters. Their names all sound like the director chose them off free AOL CDs (Xerox Drone, Orbit America, Candybar Satellite, etc). In theory, the movie is about a woman infiltrating a drug-running gang.
In practice, she runs around with them, filming their crimes (for evidence), while a fifth (otherwise unrelated) character is impregnated by some strange viral robotic avatar, captured by our gang, bound in latex, and hauled around like some bizarre good luck charm.
As the movie progresses, we get these computer-screen inserts (similar to character overviews that began the movie) declaring a level complete, and giving statistics on the movie so far (number of people killed, amount of drugs scored, etc). Is the impression supposed to be that a mechanical overfiend is treating human lives as though these sociopaths were its own private videogame? Nah, that's just my mind trying to impose pattern and sense on an otherwise pointless series of vignettes.
By the end of the movie, our undercover agent has been exposed, the gang has eaten at (dark, futuristic?) McDonald's, and the informant kills herself before her crazy gang leader can kill her ... but after he's killed the other two gang members. Meanwhile, the impregnated bondage dude escapes, only to give birth to a robotic thing roughly the size of a small ottoman (so soon? but he was hardly showing). Then some random hazmat-suited people show up and treat him. Then he wakes up, and wanders around for a while. And we see some mediocre CGI (although in contrast to the rest of the movie, mediocre is of high quality indeed). Then eventually, the director runs out of money (or drugs), and the credits roll.
Oh, well. At least I got to see the parking garage from Subterano again....
[Greg's review of the movie]
Bad movie fan site Mondo Bizarro calls this the least entertaining bad movie they've ever seen. They frequently review other movies by saying things like, "I hated this movie, but not as much as I hated Narcosys." Bad movie fan site Mondo Bizarro needs to try watching Circadian Rhythm some time. I don't even think this was the least enjoyable bad movie I saw this year.
In the future, drugs are legal. In fact, IT Corporation, the drug-making megacorp that rules the world, pays its employees directly in drugs, having eliminated money entirely. This, naturally, has resulted in a huge increase in drug crime, as the only way the unemployed have to get drugs is to steal them. Fortunately, IT Corp has a plan -- they'll poison the drugs, killing off the unemployed criminals (along with all their customers and workers). Perhaps the economics of this arrangement make more sense if you're high.
Matrix Monopoly (yes, everybody in this movie has names like this) is one of these unemployed criminal druggies. However, she's been captured by the authorities and, unfortunately for her, the penalty for every crime is death and nobody bothers with details like trials any more. Fortunately for her, the authorities are willing to cut a deal -- they'll let her go if she'll infiltrate her old gang and gather evidence against them. Think about those last two sentences for a minute.
Matrix is released and rejoins her old gang -- Metro Confetti, Candybar Satelite, and gang leader Sin Tax (IMDb calls him Sintax, which just proves that IMDb did not make it through to the end credits; not that I blame it). They're out of drugs, so they rob one of IT's drug production facilities to get more. Matrix films the whole thing on a hand-held camera. The others are initially suspicious, but she explains it's for her video blog, which they all accept as a perfectly reasonable explanation.
Meanwhile, in a completely different but no more interesting movie, IT Corporation factory worker Zerox Drone is summoned by his bosses to participate in an experiment. This involves stripping naked, having sex with a silver angel, then being electrocuted and getting holes drilled in his skull. After that, I think he gets fired. Then he wanders dazedly into the building where Sin's gang hangs out and they take him hostage, despite the fact that nobody is chasing them.
With Zerox in tow, Sin's gang commits some more crimes, while Matrix tapes them. Then they drop Zerox off at a skateboard rink and commit some more crimes, with a brief stop off for sex. Then the police almost catch them, but they get away at the last minute, which causes Sin to figure out that Matrix is a double-agent. He deals with this by taking the gang to McDonalds, then picking up Zerox and heading to a club. At the club, Zerox wanders off to the bathroom and Matrix figures out Sin is on to her, so she runs away. He walks after her, eventually catching and raping her. In the midst of this, Metro and Candy show up. They ask him what's going on and he shoots them for no particular reason. Then Matrix gets his gun and shoots herself. Meanwhile, in the bathroom, a robot explodes out of Zerox's stomach, Alien-style. Sin goes off and steals more drugs. The end.
The thing about the above description is that it makes this movie seem way more coherent than it actually was. The big thing is that almost all the dialog, rather than being actual conversations, is free-associative punning -- sequences like, "He's insane," "I'd have him committed," "He's scared of commitment." There is not a single coherent conversation in the entire movie. Also, every time a new character is introduced, we cut to a computer-graphics rendition of a 3-d rotating nude version of the character with some sort of information screen next to it and really, really annoying background. It looks like a character selection screen for a porn video game with really bad production values.
So, I see where Mondo Bizarro is coming from. And yet somehow it's more than the sum of its parts. In it's weird, drug-addled incomprehensibly, it manages to be occasionally not completely unamusing. I don't love this movie. But I don't hate it as much as Mondo Bizarro hates Narcosys.
Narcosys is sort of an Australian epilepsy test masquerading as a movie. The stated plot is not really what happens, so much as an excuse for the director to show violence and flashing lights, interspersed with some of the most painfully pointless dialogue known to man or beast (I would tell you to think Tracy & Hepburn by way of Beavis & Butthead, but even that doesn't truly convey the flavor).
The movie begins with a quick summary of the main characters. Their names all sound like the director chose them off free AOL CDs (Xerox Drone, Orbit America, Candybar Satellite, etc). In theory, the movie is about a woman infiltrating a drug-running gang.
In practice, she runs around with them, filming their crimes (for evidence), while a fifth (otherwise unrelated) character is impregnated by some strange viral robotic avatar, captured by our gang, bound in latex, and hauled around like some bizarre good luck charm.
As the movie progresses, we get these computer-screen inserts (similar to character overviews that began the movie) declaring a level complete, and giving statistics on the movie so far (number of people killed, amount of drugs scored, etc). Is the impression supposed to be that a mechanical overfiend is treating human lives as though these sociopaths were its own private videogame? Nah, that's just my mind trying to impose pattern and sense on an otherwise pointless series of vignettes.
By the end of the movie, our undercover agent has been exposed, the gang has eaten at (dark, futuristic?) McDonald's, and the informant kills herself before her crazy gang leader can kill her ... but after he's killed the other two gang members. Meanwhile, the impregnated bondage dude escapes, only to give birth to a robotic thing roughly the size of a small ottoman (so soon? but he was hardly showing). Then some random hazmat-suited people show up and treat him. Then he wakes up, and wanders around for a while. And we see some mediocre CGI (although in contrast to the rest of the movie, mediocre is of high quality indeed). Then eventually, the director runs out of money (or drugs), and the credits roll.
Oh, well. At least I got to see the parking garage from Subterano again....
[Greg's review of the movie]
Bad movie fan site Mondo Bizarro calls this the least entertaining bad movie they've ever seen. They frequently review other movies by saying things like, "I hated this movie, but not as much as I hated Narcosys." Bad movie fan site Mondo Bizarro needs to try watching Circadian Rhythm some time. I don't even think this was the least enjoyable bad movie I saw this year.
In the future, drugs are legal. In fact, IT Corporation, the drug-making megacorp that rules the world, pays its employees directly in drugs, having eliminated money entirely. This, naturally, has resulted in a huge increase in drug crime, as the only way the unemployed have to get drugs is to steal them. Fortunately, IT Corp has a plan -- they'll poison the drugs, killing off the unemployed criminals (along with all their customers and workers). Perhaps the economics of this arrangement make more sense if you're high.
Matrix Monopoly (yes, everybody in this movie has names like this) is one of these unemployed criminal druggies. However, she's been captured by the authorities and, unfortunately for her, the penalty for every crime is death and nobody bothers with details like trials any more. Fortunately for her, the authorities are willing to cut a deal -- they'll let her go if she'll infiltrate her old gang and gather evidence against them. Think about those last two sentences for a minute.
Matrix is released and rejoins her old gang -- Metro Confetti, Candybar Satelite, and gang leader Sin Tax (IMDb calls him Sintax, which just proves that IMDb did not make it through to the end credits; not that I blame it). They're out of drugs, so they rob one of IT's drug production facilities to get more. Matrix films the whole thing on a hand-held camera. The others are initially suspicious, but she explains it's for her video blog, which they all accept as a perfectly reasonable explanation.
Meanwhile, in a completely different but no more interesting movie, IT Corporation factory worker Zerox Drone is summoned by his bosses to participate in an experiment. This involves stripping naked, having sex with a silver angel, then being electrocuted and getting holes drilled in his skull. After that, I think he gets fired. Then he wanders dazedly into the building where Sin's gang hangs out and they take him hostage, despite the fact that nobody is chasing them.
With Zerox in tow, Sin's gang commits some more crimes, while Matrix tapes them. Then they drop Zerox off at a skateboard rink and commit some more crimes, with a brief stop off for sex. Then the police almost catch them, but they get away at the last minute, which causes Sin to figure out that Matrix is a double-agent. He deals with this by taking the gang to McDonalds, then picking up Zerox and heading to a club. At the club, Zerox wanders off to the bathroom and Matrix figures out Sin is on to her, so she runs away. He walks after her, eventually catching and raping her. In the midst of this, Metro and Candy show up. They ask him what's going on and he shoots them for no particular reason. Then Matrix gets his gun and shoots herself. Meanwhile, in the bathroom, a robot explodes out of Zerox's stomach, Alien-style. Sin goes off and steals more drugs. The end.
The thing about the above description is that it makes this movie seem way more coherent than it actually was. The big thing is that almost all the dialog, rather than being actual conversations, is free-associative punning -- sequences like, "He's insane," "I'd have him committed," "He's scared of commitment." There is not a single coherent conversation in the entire movie. Also, every time a new character is introduced, we cut to a computer-graphics rendition of a 3-d rotating nude version of the character with some sort of information screen next to it and really, really annoying background. It looks like a character selection screen for a porn video game with really bad production values.
So, I see where Mondo Bizarro is coming from. And yet somehow it's more than the sum of its parts. In it's weird, drug-addled incomprehensibly, it manages to be occasionally not completely unamusing. I don't love this movie. But I don't hate it as much as Mondo Bizarro hates Narcosys.
Kevin Hogan & Greg Pearson
"Wanna Run That By Me Again?"
Mark Bakaitis
