sideFX (2004)

Brilliant and touching

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

A drug makes people black out and crave blood. Matt (Todd Swift) is planing a party where he plans to distribute the drug.The film was low budget so the party was no rave. The limit budget made the party small with no decent music whereas a larger budget would of had 100 people in costume, Billy Idol or NIN playing and tons of people attacking each other. Instead it was a whimper. The background information could have been presented a bit more interesting.This was Amber Heard's first major motion picture for the large screen long before Johnny Depp used her as a punching bag.Guide: F-word, sex, nudity. Available on a multi-pack if you don't want any extras other than other bad films.

This is an okay movie if you find yourself in awe of the local high school drama productions. Otherwise this movie is one you probably want to give a pass. Despite the promise of an ecstasy type drug (Ace), there's very little nudity or sex. Which is one of the plot holes of the movie: the drug seems to give about 30 seconds of sexual bliss, and then people start drinking other people's blood. So you have 30 seconds of great sex and then start killing people: who would take this drug? There's a toss away line about how the drug affects different people differently, but still, it hardly seems worth it.The only decent sex-type scene is with Amanda Phillips solo. She manages to be more erotic with her clothes on (although how erotic can the drug be if you keep your clothes on after taking it?), then the other actresses who go topless. However, she doesn't seem to be hopelessly addicted. Phillips has some talent throughout, doing an amusing Renfield impersonation at some points, and conveying the paranoia of the drug in others. Hopefully she'll move on to bigger and better things.The other actors are execrable. Todd Swift is the worst example, coming across as a poor man's Jake Busey. His character Matt has no redeeming social value whatsoever: moving in with his "friend" Tuesday (how that comes about is never explained), slipping her a drug, leaving her with the tab for delivery pizza, and casually blowing off the deaths of two of his friends. However, nobody else is any better, Ms. Phillips excepted. Swift just gets more screen time.Plot holes abound. Tuesday apparently kills two of her friends, somehow tracking them several miles as they're driving in a car and passing over hundreds of other potential prey. As noted, the sex drug only seems to cause ecstasy for about 30 seconds. The zombie- victims go from bouts of insanity to perfect lucidity. Some of the zombie-vampires wear masks, which prevent them from actually biting people.The movie also provides a near-perfect example of Chekhov's smoking gun maxim: the guys find a functional gun in an abandoned house for no particular reason, and you know they're going to end up using it later.And despite their relatively short run time, the movie is hopelessly padded with scenes of people walking... and walking... and walking... and staring off into the dark trying to see something. And then more walking.Production values are non-existent, and the flashback historical sequences seem to have been mounted by dropouts from the local SCA group.Really not much to recommend for this one other then Scene 6, but you can watch for the unintentional camp value.

Somewhere in this junk there is a good concept for a horror movie. A group of teens take a new drug that gives them an overpowering thirst for blood. A good script with a decent budget could spin this into something really frightening and effective.Sadly, this is not that film. Among the myriad of problems encountered are: Terrible acting by most of the cast, including the lead "actress"; poor lighting in many, many scenes that leaves you unable to see what is going on (was this lit by candlelight?); badly mixed sound that renders a lot of the dialogue inaudible and occasionally provides a loud squawk of sound effects that grates on the nerves rather than shocking; and a poorly written script that meanders around, taking a break for a couple scenes of stupid teens doing stupid things and getting attacked by their stupid friends.The final party scene is so badly shot that it is impossible to tell what the hell is transpiring. I'm guessing that it had to be shot in this slipshod manner because of budget constraints that show that only about eight people are at this "major" rave. The same nonsense happened in the even worse movie House of the Dead. Note to editor: no one is being fooled. It reeks of low budget badness.The director seems competent, adding an occasional touch that works, but it's hard to tell if he really is any good with all the other problems. Avoid.

This film starts off telling the audience about drug percentages in this country and explains about some university people who created a drug that makes people do way out things. The effects of this drug seem to stimulate the desire for red hot sex which leads to getting thirsty and not for a glass of water, but for something more colorful. In the first scene of the film you see a guy putting a few drops of liquid into a young blonde's cocktail glass and not too long after she takes off her bra and he and she do their thing together. Gals and guys get over heated through out the picture and there is a very stupid explanation as to why this is all happening, it is a date rape drunk that makes you want to do many more things than make love. If this type of film interests you, you had better view a good Christopher Lee film about Vampires, you will enjoy the film and certainly not this ONE !