Fatal Attraction knockoff time! This steamy erotic thriller follows tech millionaire Chris, who develops a hot relationship with Sky. All is going well until Chris becomes injured and Sky quickly steps in as his nurse. He notices that Sky’s behavior has been odd and suspects sinister intentions, especially when her roommate is found dead from mysterious causes. The upcoming film features Acadamy Award nominee John Malovich, Frank Grillo, Cameron Monaghan, and Lilly Krug, a talented cast filled with newcomers and veterans. This list will focus on the five terrible films that involve the cast of Shattered. Each film has over ten reviews that have been mostly unfavorable. The only exemption from this list is animated movies. Let’s get started with the first feature on the list.
Vampire Academy
This bad adaptation sees human/vampire hybrid Rose Hathaway attend St. Vladamir’s Academy, which is a secret school for special creatures such as Rose. She trains with a mentor to guarantee her place as Lissa’s guardian, but her enemies within and outside the walls of St. Vladamir may prevent her from meeting her true potential. Vampire Academy doesn’t seem to understand the type of film it wants to be. It tries to be a satirical farce on teenage romance in movies, yet the film somehow falls into the same trap as teenage romance films as well. Vampire Academy is a confusing mess of a movie that features bad acting, cheesy and too much expositional dialogue, and a set of underdeveloped characters. The fact this film wasn’t nominated for a Golden Raspberry remains truly shocking.
Reprisal
In one of Bruce Willis’s “fun” straight-to-DVD movies, Frank Grillo plays an ex-cop who joins forces to track down a highly skilled thief. However, when Frank’s wife and daughter is kidnapped, all hell breaks loose and the ex-cop fights for the survival of his loved ones. Unfortunately, Reprisal is the reason why so many look down on straight-to-DVD films. It’s cheap, lazy, and terribly acted. Grillo is fine here, but he’s stuck working with a script that’s incoherent and lazy. The action set pieces are uninspired and the plot is extremely predictable, yet suffers from shotty execution. As for Bruce Willis? Don’t expect the charismatic guy that led the classic Die Hard film. Reprisal feels nothing more than a paycheck movie for him, and that shows based on his dismal and dull performance.
Jonah Hex
In one of the worst comic-book adaptations to date, Jonah Hex sees Josh Brolin play the title character who’s a gunslinger and bounty hunter who’s able to step into both the natural and supernatural worlds. Hex is offered an irresistible deal: the army will erase all the warrants on his head if he finds Quentin Turnbull, an old enemy who will stop at nothing to kill him. A misguided, loud, but non-sensical action spectacle that fails to do anything good with its source material. The sad part is that Josh Brolin is actually good as the title character, but the filmmakers just didn’t understand the world of Jonah Hex and it shows thanks to the cliched and uninspired writing.
Ava
This spy thriller had all the tools to be a great addition to the genre, but unfortunately, Ava lets down its A-list cast at every turn. The film follows the title character, an assassin who’s betrayed by her own organization after she uncovers some dark secrets. The main issue is that you’ve seen Ava a thousand times before. It doesn’t do anything new with the “assassin/spy is betrayed by their own kind” premise and it actually becomes a bit convoluted as the film rolls along. Jessica Chastain does well with what she’s given, and the supporting cast is fine in their roles, it’s just a shame that Tate Taylor doesn’t know how to properly use them.
Cosmic Sin
Frank Grillo and Bruce Willis star in another low affair but this time it’s a sci-fi feature set in 2524, four hundred years after humans started colonizing the outer planets. Retired Military General Ford and General Ryle join an elite group of soldiers to stop a hostile alien fleet. Admittedly, Cosmic Sin doesn’t look bad for a low budget sci-fi feature and some of the ideas presented could’ve made for a compelling feature; however, none of this results in an original film. What’s worse, is that it’s a bad one with atrocious acting, under written characters, and action that’s edited horribly together. Of course, this is straight-to-DVD Bruce Willis, so his performance is stoic and dry. Grillo fares a bit better here, but he falls under the same trap as his supporting cast members.
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