Hamstrung by stiff acting, an incongruous musical score that belongs in a Golan-Globus cop flick, and a flimsy concept better suited for an episode of Tales From The Darkside than a feature-length film, this bland but serviceable thriller probably won't resonate with too many horror fans as a classic. Metamorphosis isn't a particularly original or exciting movie, it's just kind of there, and none of the ideas on the screen here seem to suggest any loftier ambitions than those this release ultimately realized as a prototypical late-'80s/early-'90s direct-to-video offering. Nonetheless, there's just enough meat here to keep forgiving genre fans engaged--and a burst of roaring unintentional comedy awaiting those who stick things out until the final act.
The plot owes a large debt to David Cronenberg's masterful take on The Fly, the only novel alteration being that this film's protagonist-slash-antagonist is fixated on a scientific innovation intended to stop humans from aging rather than molecular teleportation (though please don't read that comparison as an equivalency; neither the action nor the effects in this flick are anywhere near as breathtaking as the material Croneberg summoned a few years earlier). When Dr. Peter Housman is faced with the threat of having the funding for his genetic research cancelled, his desperate need for results drives him to act as his own guinea pig and inject himself with his experimental serum. Obviously, since this is a horror flick, that turns out to be a terrible idea. Rather than making his cells invincible to the ravages of time, the inoculation instead imbues him with supernatural strength (hey, that's not such a bad side effect) and causes him to unconsciously prowl the night beating up prostitutes (okay, yeah, that one's bad). Once you factor in the unpleasant matter of his subsequently turning into a deformed monstrosity that feasts on human flesh , it becomes pretty clear that Dr. Houseman isn't nearly as brilliant a scientist as everyone else in the movie keeps saying he is.
Since this tale could easily be told in thirty minutes of screen-time, the film is padded with unnecessary passages that accomplish nothing more than stifling whatever momentum the scenario builds. Houseman's romantic entanglement with a single mom who is sent by the university's money-men to assess his work is ostensibly intended to mirror Geena Davis's presence in The Fly, but this subplot adds virtually nothing to the story other than the opportunity for a dimly-lit and wantonly gratuitous softcore sex scene. Other space-filling mechanisms include needless interludes informing us that the young son of Houseman's inamorata doesn't like him very much (which makes sense, since he isn't especially likeable) and numerous tedious vignettes of the Doctor doing science-y stuff on his computer (to remind us he is in fact a scientist, I suppose). There's also far too much time spent squandered on secondary characters who supply jargon-filled extrapolations on the biological causality of the titular transformation; though probably meant to clarify Houseman's plight for the audience, their accounts only serve to make the entire affair seem more implausible, particularly when the explanation the peanut gallery settles upon is that the professor's serum has activated cells that have lain dormant in the human body through millions of years of evolution--in other words, mankind's distant ancestors were evidently homicidal reptile-faced blood-beasts, too.
The gore effects are far from spectacular, but handled capably enough, and despite some other criticisms I've read, the various stages of Dr. Houseman's grotesque makeover are executed about as effectively as the budget allows. Unfortunately, the same can't be said about the penultimate phase of his progression, when he mutates into what appears to be a strobe-lit dinosaur puppet. This monumentally silly reveal renders what's supposed to be the gripping culmination an exhibition of pure slapstick which completely upends the possibility of anyone taking this outing seriously--though the characters who encounter Houseman's climactic monstrosity gasp with shock and horror, any seasoned genre fan will undoubtedly deem laughter a far more fitting reaction. And the chuckles are bound to keep on coming when you get a load of the goofy tacked-on "twist" ending, too.
Ultimately, despite the absurdist heights the film reaches in its last reel, the sum total of Metamorphosis as a whole is merely decent. Whether or not that moderate result and a couple of giggles is worth 90 minutes of your time is up to you.
The plot owes a large debt to David Cronenberg's masterful take on The Fly, the only novel alteration being that this film's protagonist-slash-antagonist is fixated on a scientific innovation intended to stop humans from aging rather than molecular teleportation (though please don't read that comparison as an equivalency; neither the action nor the effects in this flick are anywhere near as breathtaking as the material Croneberg summoned a few years earlier). When Dr. Peter Housman is faced with the threat of having the funding for his genetic research cancelled, his desperate need for results drives him to act as his own guinea pig and inject himself with his experimental serum. Obviously, since this is a horror flick, that turns out to be a terrible idea. Rather than making his cells invincible to the ravages of time, the inoculation instead imbues him with supernatural strength (hey, that's not such a bad side effect) and causes him to unconsciously prowl the night beating up prostitutes (okay, yeah, that one's bad). Once you factor in the unpleasant matter of his subsequently turning into a deformed monstrosity that feasts on human flesh , it becomes pretty clear that Dr. Houseman isn't nearly as brilliant a scientist as everyone else in the movie keeps saying he is.
Since this tale could easily be told in thirty minutes of screen-time, the film is padded with unnecessary passages that accomplish nothing more than stifling whatever momentum the scenario builds. Houseman's romantic entanglement with a single mom who is sent by the university's money-men to assess his work is ostensibly intended to mirror Geena Davis's presence in The Fly, but this subplot adds virtually nothing to the story other than the opportunity for a dimly-lit and wantonly gratuitous softcore sex scene. Other space-filling mechanisms include needless interludes informing us that the young son of Houseman's inamorata doesn't like him very much (which makes sense, since he isn't especially likeable) and numerous tedious vignettes of the Doctor doing science-y stuff on his computer (to remind us he is in fact a scientist, I suppose). There's also far too much time spent squandered on secondary characters who supply jargon-filled extrapolations on the biological causality of the titular transformation; though probably meant to clarify Houseman's plight for the audience, their accounts only serve to make the entire affair seem more implausible, particularly when the explanation the peanut gallery settles upon is that the professor's serum has activated cells that have lain dormant in the human body through millions of years of evolution--in other words, mankind's distant ancestors were evidently homicidal reptile-faced blood-beasts, too.
The gore effects are far from spectacular, but handled capably enough, and despite some other criticisms I've read, the various stages of Dr. Houseman's grotesque makeover are executed about as effectively as the budget allows. Unfortunately, the same can't be said about the penultimate phase of his progression, when he mutates into what appears to be a strobe-lit dinosaur puppet. This monumentally silly reveal renders what's supposed to be the gripping culmination an exhibition of pure slapstick which completely upends the possibility of anyone taking this outing seriously--though the characters who encounter Houseman's climactic monstrosity gasp with shock and horror, any seasoned genre fan will undoubtedly deem laughter a far more fitting reaction. And the chuckles are bound to keep on coming when you get a load of the goofy tacked-on "twist" ending, too.
Ultimately, despite the absurdist heights the film reaches in its last reel, the sum total of Metamorphosis as a whole is merely decent. Whether or not that moderate result and a couple of giggles is worth 90 minutes of your time is up to you.