Screamers The Hunting (2009)

The marvellous (?) thing about science fiction and horror movies is, no matter how poorly a film does, or how bad it is, you can always find someone willing to make a sequel to it. In this case it has been 14 years since Screamers was released to little praise and little success (I liked it anyway). Despite that response, Screamers has an advantage over most films because its source is the genius of Philip K Dick. Dick's stories were also the basis for Blade Runner, Total Recall, Imposter, Minority Report, Paycheck, A Scanner Darkly, and Next. Sadly the movies are rarely as challenging and thought provoking as the original stories.

In Screamers The Hunting, a rescue team is sent to Sirius 6B after an SOS is received. The humans of the planet were all presumed killed when fighting between two warring factions went out of control with the invention of Screamers. The Autonomous Mobile Swords were machines that tracked down and exterminated humans. The machines were self replicating and made improvements to themselves, with the latest models resembling humans. The original film finished on a cliffhanger involving Peter Weller’s character. That situation is resolved with the presence of Weller’s character’s daughter who uncovers the truth about her father’s fate.

The soldiers head across the planet looking for the survivors. What they find are a bunch of humans hiding in a cave, hordes of Screamers still tracking and killing humans, and Lance Henriksen who is always good value. A by the numbers action film as the soldiers try to make it back to their ship before the planet is destroyed. I wish something new would have happened, but the sequel is little more than an uninspired rehash of the first film.