Writer/director Paul Anderson (
Religious press critics sound like the movie has numbed them into zombies. The USCCB's critic writes, "Anderson's frenetic sci-fi flick has an absurd story that uses explicit violence and tuneless, ear-piercing music to fill in cavernous narrative holes."
Paul Bicking (Preview) speaks from experience with video games. "Having played older video games, such as the classic
Michael Elliott writes, "I found its incessant macabre violence to be both repetitive and tiresome." He makes a distinction between
Bob Smithouser (Focus on the Family) finds the film "far too violent, gory and ridiculous to make me care about who sabotaged the lab or why. I just wanted the rampage to end."
"The filmmakers should have at least given their audience something to cheer about in the end," writes Tom Snyder (
Ebert shakes his head at the film's ludicrous action sequences. "There is one neat effect when characters unwisely venture into a corridor and the door slams shut on them. Then a laser beam passes at head level, decapitating one. Another beam whizzes past at waist level, cutting the second in two while the others duck. A third laser pretends to be high but then switches to low, but the third character outsmarts it by jumping at the last minute. Then the fourth laser turns into a grid that dices its victim into pieces the size of a Big Mac. Since the grid is inescapable, what were the earlier lasers about? Does the corridor have a sense of humor?"
MaryAnn Johanson ridicules "a rather breathtaking lack of attempts at creating characters and a brazen avoidance of any semblance of a story or even a logical procession from one scene to the next. It's about really loud hard rock music drowning out the nonsense and making the whole affair feel like a 100-minute music video."