• Directed by Amir Valinia
• Written by Evan Scott and Sam Sullivan III
• Starring
  • Michael Ironside
  • Steven Bauer
  • Louis Herthum
  • Tony Senzemici
  • Sharon Landry

By including Mutants in Month of the Living Dead 9, I’m stretching the definition of “zombie” almost to the breaking point. These creatures technically aren’t the living dead; they’ve been exposed to an addictive viral agent which causes skin lesions, unfocused rage, and general unwashedness. (In other words, they’re even less zombie-like than the pseudo-zombies in 28 Days Later (2002) and 28 Weeks Later (2007).) On the other hand, there’s a sinister corporate body which both causes and covers up the mutating agent, which is a component of so many recent zombie movies that it almost makes up for the lack of actual living death. Plus, the movie’s an unholy mess, so it fits right in with too many entries in the genre.

You might hold out hope for a cheap but satisfying movie because one of the first faces you see is that of Michael Ironside. But Ironside is usually the best part of any movie he’s in, and in this case his superiority over the rest of the movie is drastic. And he’s not really trying. He’s Colonel Gauge of the mercenary force Shadow Rock, and for most of the running time he only appears in a Jeep in videoconference with Lt. Com. Santiago (Steven Bauer), who answers to the Joint Chiefs and has been doing recon on “Operation Stalker,” telling Gauge (and us) things that he couldn’t possibly know because he wasn’t there; Santiago never appears outside of the video conference. I was ready to believe that Ironside’s role was entirely created in reshoots to give some semblance of coherence to the storyline, but then he shows up in the narrative for the last twenty minutes. So now I just think it was a poorly written script from the get-go. (Why does Gauge address Santiago as “Lieutenant Commander”? It’s different for the British, but here in America, that rank is abbreviated to just “Commander” for address.)

Note: As a matter of policy, this website does not begrudge Michael Ironside a paycheck.

The main plot, such as it is, involves the Baton Rouge-based Just Rite Sugar Company, which is developing a new strain of sugar (or is it an additive?) that will be “more addictive than cocaine and caffeine combined.” And we could just stop there and fill up the rest of this review unpacking the idiocy contained in that one sentence. Does the sugar industry really have high enough margins that a company can afford the massive R&D efforts necessary for this kind of development? And why engage in this kind of addictive subterfuge on a product which has no brand loyalty among consumers? I mean, a nicotine addict is usually fiercely loyal to his brand of cigarettes, and a caffeine addict to his preferred method of ingestion, hot or cold; but a sugar addict, especially one who doesn’t know that sugar is “his candy,” so to speak, won’t even be aware that one brand is different from another, unless (a) the taste is different, or (b) a massive advertising campaign makes him aware of the difference, either one of which would bring the FDA crashing down on them, along with the DEA. And let’s leave alone the idea that the autonomous Just Rite Sugar Company is a major player, when commodity markets are dominated by conglomerations like ConAgra or Archer Daniels Midland.

But it’s not just standard-issue moustache-twirling that Just Rite CEO Braylon (Richard Zeringue) indulges in. He’s got a Russian scientist, Dr. Petrov (Armando Leduc) who supervises the testing of the additive in full Boris Badenov accent — this despite the fact that it’s established that he was born and raised in America to immigrant parents. He’s also got a black-ops-style security chief, Sykes (Tony Senzamici), who supervises the acquisition of test subjects: He and his team trank and snatch junkies and runaways from the city streets and gives them over to Petrov, who tests various additive batches on them and then imprisons them in the “abandoned” sugar mill on the Just Rite property and watches as mental functions deteriorate and oozing blemishes pop out on the skin. Sometimes a test subject escapes, and Sykes and his team hunt him down in the cane fields around the mill.

Oh, the empty calories! Oh, the symbolism!

And yes, I reiterate, all of these nefarious goings-on are in the service of sugar. It’s like Braylon determined early in life (or at least while studying for his MBA) that, in whatever industry he ended up working, he would do it with EE-vil!

You may have noticed that, 700-plus words in, I still haven’t mentioned a protagonist. That’s because our nominal protagonist doesn’t protag much. Erin (Sharon Landry) is Braylon’s indispensable administrative assistant, and despite having her desk right outside the lion’s den, she has no idea that she’s working for the Dark Lord of Sweet. Her father Griff (Louis Herthum), who looks like a cross between Clint Eastwood and Robert Pine from CHiPs, is a security guard at Just Rite (the normal kind who checks badges at the gate, not Sykes’ covert-ops types), who’s kind of fallen to pieces with smoking and drinking since his wife died. Oh, he’s also a former Navy S.E.A.L. Convenient, that.

Remember: The family that lives as corporate pawns together, um… Help me out here.

Not only that, but Erin’s brother Ryan (Derrick Denicola), a journalism student, is out photographing some street scenes at night on skid row when he sees Sykes’ team snatch a young girl; he gets involved and ends up yet another test subject. For some reason, there’s a big go-nowhere subplot about the girl, Hannah (Jessica Heap), who is not a junkie, as Santiago — remember him? — goes to great lengths to point out. But what she’s doing on skid row if she’s not a junkie and why we should care is never explained. In fact, one of the first scenes of the movie is her escaping and getting shot down. (It takes about a half to two-thirds of the movie to roughly figure out what’s a flashback and what’s linear. Confuse your viewers! It’s a sure-fire strategy!)

So Erin’s putting up missing persons posters for Ryan when she starts getting mysterious emails from “Cinderella” which automatically print upon receipt, then delete themselves. They start pointing her to odd budget items for Just Rite, mostly involving the old mill ($1 million is such an astronomical number that it arouses her suspicions? Really?). Then…

“Drunk? Naw, I’m a better shot when I’m drunk.”

Aw, heck. Then more stuff happens that we don’t care about, and the third act is largely Erin, Griff and “Cinderella” rescuing Ryan from the mill and then trying to get back across the locked-down facility while infected people pop up at random and get shot down like a video game. There’s also a big mano-a-mano fight between Gauge and Colonel Briggs (Marc Gill), the original owner of Shadow Rock who apparently had some kind of “understanding” with Braylon but about whom we’ve heard very little. Because there’s nothing better than ending a movie with a climactic fight involving someone we’ve never seen before, right?

“How many do I have to get before I level-up?”

The entire heart and soul of the philosophy behind Mutants is encapsulated at the end when the mill “explodes” and “burns” via unconvincing CGI superimpositions. Couldn’t anyone build and blow up a model? Could it have been that hard to do it in such a way that it’s not insulting to the intelligence and standards of the audience? Really, the whole movie’s like that.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 26
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 1
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0