Here's a flick that I'm really hoping doesn't end up in the 'trailer looked great, but the movie sucked big time' scrapheap.

It's futuristic sci-fi actioner The Mutant Chronicles, starring Thomas Jane, Ron Perlman and John Malkovich and Devon Aoki.

Loosely based on the pen-and-paper role-playing game that was first published by a Swedish company in 1993, the film is set in the Year 2707 when humans must battle a horde of mutant creatures (a more detailed synopsis is below).



Like Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko follow-up Southland Tales, The Mutant Chronicles has been a labor of love for relative unknown British director Simon Hunter, having been in development for most of this decade.

Three years after filming first began, the movie finally has an official American release date, April 24 2009, though it did show up on some theatres across Europe last year, and was met with a lukewarm response.

In fact, of the 15 reviews collected by rottentomatoes.com 12 have given the flick the flick, with the RT consensus being "bad acting, poor CGI and clunky script mean this sci-fi thriller is lacking in all departments including the thrills".


Hunter has continued to tinker with the final cut, and if the new preview is anything to go by it looks pretty impressive - especially for an independently made movie.

The story takes place on unrecognizable Earth, as mentioned in the Year 2707, when a war is raging between four giant corporations who control Earth. They battle over the planet's dwindling resources.

This war is soon rendered irrelevant however when an errant bomb shatters an ancient buried seal, releasing a horrific mutant army from its prison deep within the earth.



As the mutant scourge threatens human extinction, a squad of ragged soldiers, led by Mitch Hunter (Jane) and Brother Samuel (Perlman), leader of the Brotherhood (an ancient monastic order), descends into the earth in a last ditch effort to destroy the mutants and save mankind.

There have been a number of good old-fashioned sci-fi films in recent years I've had high hopes for - Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, The Chronicles of Riddick and Doom - and apart from the first one, they have been a resounding failure.
Fingers crossed for this one.