Photo by Abe PeristeinAll's Weller That Ends Weller: Surviving is the best revenge for Peter Weller in "Screamers."
Technology gone wrong stalks 'Screamers'
By Allen Barra
A screamer is a small, underground killing machine, or animal, or part animal-machine--I never got this part straight--that burrows beneath its victims and then bursts out of the ground, buzz-saw blades whirring, and ... well, as a soldier in Screamers says, "No matter how many times I see that happen, it still makes me sick." The first time was enough for me. Peter Weller has been telling a lot of interviewers (myself included) that Screamers isn't an action film, meaning "not just an action film," and he's right. A lot of care has gone into the making of Screamers, from the creepy, atmospheric sets to the elaborate explanation as to why two sides have been fighting a long, bitter war on a desolate planet.
Most of it, however, was lost on me. I couldn't figure out who was killing whom or why, or why one side would have built anything like screamers in the first place. (Simple land mines would have worked quite as well, but it's hard to build a movie around land mines.) Me, I'm the kind of person that if I walked into a large, burnt-out factory (of the kind that dot the landscape in Screamers), I'd hold tight to my combination machine gun/grenade thrower. In this movie, people are always putting down their weapons and walking into badly lighted places alone.
Which is to say that it's not the science or the fiction I find improbable, but the people and the situation. In relatively sophisticated sci-fi like The Terminator, we're told that the mayhem is justified by the morality: If we aren't careful in the use of technology, it could overwhelm us. Screamers is the same kind of cautionary tale: Technology run rampant is a dangerous thing. Well, okay, but who's out there arguing the contrary? Has there ever been a science-fiction story that preached that unlimited weaponry was a good thing? The technology in these movies is complex, but the morality is invariably simplistic.
That said, Screamers is a full cut above most entries in the genre. It's long on suspense and relatively short on mayhem. Director Christian Duguay has a spectacular visual sense, and Peter Weller, with his lean, wolfish demeanor, looks like the kind of guy who could survive an apocalyptic war in which brains and wits might be a factor. The plot has bigger holes than the ones the screamers suck their victims down into, but if you're going to complain about something like that then you're better off avoiding movies like this in the first place.
Screamers (R; 107 min.), directed Christian Duguay, written by Dan O'Bannon and Miguel Tejada-Flores, based on the story "Second Variety" by Philip K. Dick, photographed by Rodney Gibbons and starring Peter Weller and Jennifer Rubin.
