Plot
Four millionaires pay a shady
businessman to arrange them the ultimate hunt - live human prey. Four criminals
are kidnapped, shipped out to a remote tropical island and given a 24-hour head
start before the hunters set off in pursuit. What none of them reckon on is the
multi-headed mythical monster, the Hydra, which lives on the island.
Review
Jeez, that plot seems to be stretching it
just a bit. It sounded believable enough until the completely random inclusion
of the Hydra on the island! I mean come on Sci-Fi Channel, could you not just
have had some giant lizard or dinosaur living there instead of a mythical
monster? Or if you're going to use something as mythical as the Hydra, then
surely you can come up with something a little more relevant for it to be
featured in. Anyhow, with this being the Sci-Fi Channel and this being one of
it's "creature features" that it has been spewing out rapidly over the last few
years, the Hydra is going to be as important as a pair of snow shoes in the
Sahara desert by the time the credits roll.
As with the majority of the
Sci-Fi Channel's output, Hydra is mostly throwaway junk. The story is
just awful as I've already commented on. It's had potential on paper with the
"hunting humans as prey" story but
absolutely nothing is made of it once it has been introduced. The actual hunt
wasn't even worth starting as the characters run around for a bit before the
Hydra finishes everyone off pretty quickly. The characters are all terrible.
The group of "convicts" look straight out of college and it will need all of
your imagination to buy them as cons. It would have been easier to have them as
kidnapped freshmen instead of apparent cons. At least it would explain the goofy
black guy and the unnecessary romance between the single male and the single
female characters. The hunters fare no better as each has a few lines of
dialogue before they head off to the island. Just to distinguish them all, they
dress in different "stereotypical hunter attire" meaning one guy wears an
English-style tweed jacket and flat cap, another wears camouflage, the redneck
wears the cowboy hat and I can't remember what the other guy was wearing but it
was "hunter-esque." Even the characters on the ship are all one-dimensional
goofs. The captain just chomps cigars all of the time but at least looks like
he's having fun with his role. His crew are all just random muscle men who are
simply sent to the island to provide more fodder for the Hydra. At least Jana
Williams provides some much needed glamour and sex appeal as the businessman's
wife. But alas this is Sci-Fi Channel material so the closest she gets to being
naked is a quick bikini shot!
Let's get to the actual Hydra shall we? Terrible is all that I can really say. CGI
effects just don't cut it when they are this shoddy. The monster grows two heads
when it loses one but this only happens when people actually fight back. Most of
the time it's victims just fall over unconvincingly and let it eat them. It gets
very well fed during the film but that's about all you see of it. It has the
ability to sneak up on people almost without a sound too and doesn't leave any
tracks on the sand when it slithers across to devour a couple of boneheads
shooting pistols at it. If you see a giant monster which clearly wants to eat
you and you are armed with a small pistol, what would you do? Run away as fast
as you can and use the pistol as a last resort or just stand there and fire
aimlessly in the hope that your small bullet will hit a vital organ? I'm not a
fast person but I'd be out there like a flash! The monster just rips CGI people
apart and there's plenty of CGI gore but it all amounts to very little as it
happens so often. I want to see slow deaths - getting eaten alive in these films
is an instant death in most cases and the monsters chew people up too easily for
my liking. On the positive side, this is one of the few Sci-Fi Channel films
that I've seen that doesn't fill up the cast with Eastern European hacks.
Everyone speaks English perfectly which is a nice change!
Verdict
Hydra actually had potential in
my opinion but that was all frittered away within the opening few minutes! The
mythological monster is one of the best out there and when treat right (see
Jason and the Argonauts), it can actually look awesome. But the Hydra
totally deserves better than this drivel. Slightly better than your usual Sci-Fi
Channel guff but that's not exactly a badge of honour.
