Hybrid. (Or Super Hybrid?)

I wanted to open this with a huge amount of information on 'After Dark' but honestly I have no idea what After Dark is, I just noticed one day that a load of films in my local discount DVD store all had the same After Dark box and it gave the inner hoarder in me something to get excited about. And it still does, today in HMV I didn't just come across one new After Dark film, I came across two! 

What I can gather from the films I have watched is that they are all independent horror productions but most are backed by companies like SyFy and according to the viable source of Wikipedia and Google in general After Dark are a production company specialising in horror movies, they also have a festival where they showcase these works. Although apparently these have now been replaced by After Dark Originals which are just a new series of films? This one isn't one of the ADO's, which are what all the After Dark Movies I have seen so far have been but who knows, could be fun. Enjoy!

This film was made in 2010 which makes it topical(ish) but it happens to be more topical for me because After Dark movies were some of the first films me and my ex watched together (and ironically some of the last) and I had quite a few saved up to watch with her, that now I will seemingly never get the chance too so instead I'll sit in the dark in front my laptop and watch them completely alone, joys. 

So first up we have Hybrid, or Super Hybrid? The DVD in HMV says Hybrid but searching on the internet for this under any other title than Super Hybrid gets you no results. Weird. Anyway this is a movie about a shapeshifting killer car which may or may not be a hybrid, evolved squid or an alien (I am not making this up) with its own unique way of seeing the world, like a sort of blurry redness. The car happens to eat people, I think, it never really makes this clear. And then it turns them into goo or the goo is its blood, I'm not really sure... No, this is nowhere near as awesome as it sounds.

The cheapness of the film is obvious from the very beginning, whether the stock footage, the stock sound effects, the crappy filters for the lens, the awful special effects, the terrible acting, the fact the sound mixing and recording can often mean music is too loud or you just can't hear what people are saying, or maybe the fact that nearly all of the film is set in the same building or the noticabley amateur cinematography. Yes, this film isn't very good. After Dark movies have a tendency to be very hit and miss and seem to have no correlation to what the scores are on IMDB, I'd recommend Second's Apart, Husk, 51 and Prowl. What I will say as a positive in terms of a technical level is that Hybrid is at least well lit and sets up a tense atmosphere well.

That being said, the mystery of what exactly the car is manages to be interesting enough to keep you watching despite how shit this movie is. Although I think some things are revealed a little too quickly and characters find themselves on the same page much too quickly also and that being said, somehow still so much is left unanswered at the end. They manage to reveal just enough to ruin the mystery and leave me frustrated with the fragments of an explanation I'm left with at the end. Either keep it a mystery or fucking explain yourself!

This film has so many pop culture references, I don't know whether it is trying to make the characters seem more 'real' or the dialogue more 'natural' but either way it doesn't work. It just reminds me the X-Men movies are a lot better than this one.

The film is very silly, very goofy and because of this, it manages to be quite good fun. I have a feeling it is never quite taking itself seriously with some of the crazy scenes that unfurl as the movie goes. There are some real badass moments too. Plus there are some interesting kills too, it takes a while for it all to start getting fun, but when it gets there, this film is hard not to enjoy. That being said at times the silliness goes a little too far, like much of the climax of the film rests on the concept 'If it can bleed, it can die', we know nothing about this shapeshifting squid alien car thing, how do we even know that the goo is blood? How do we know that means it can die? Well we don't. Does this ever cause conflict in the film? Nope! It is blood, it does die. OBVIOUS SPOILER! What a load of bullshit. And the CGI is so bad and so overused, the final battle just comes off a little pathetic. 

And what was with that twist ending? Did they really think they'd get a sequel to this? They actually thought they'd made something good? Is that why you left out so much information on what exactly the car was?

So do I recommend this? I watch a lot of films but Hybrid still managed to be up there with some of the shittiest films I have ever seen. This was just awful. It somehow manages to fail on basically every level, technically it fails, the screenplay is underwritten, the acting is awful, the dialogue is awful. Just blurgh! 

Admittedly there are some good action sequences and it does a good job of setting the mood and at times it can be entertaining but it really isn't worth sitting through this shitfest for those occasional moments of entertainment because even those are only just average. 

Think About It!

-Locke