The Gene Generation (2007)

Directed by: Pearry Regionald Teo | 92 minutes | science fiction | Actors: Bai Ling, Alec Newman, Parry Shen, Faye Dunaway, Ethan Cohn, Robert David Hall, Michael Shamus Wiles, Daniel Zacapa, Erin Layne, Jeff Imada, Nils Allen Stewart, Richard Cetrone, Hiro Koda, Marco Khan, Allison Dunbar, Tom Choi, Nick Tate, Googy Gress, Layton Matthews, Jennifer Chu, Bernard Baima, Marilyn O’Connor, John Storey, Tom Tate, Jordan Dang, Faber Dewar, Alice Rietveld

Suppose you are the creative brain behind a comic book series and a fairly successful director of short horror films. It is only logical that at some point you get the ambition to film your own work. Unfortunately, ambition alone is not enough to get started; investments are needed. If big money lenders hold off the boat, you have to row with the oars you have, although in this case they do not reach to the water. Or is it better to put your plans on hold until you have more money and good people at your disposal? Looks like director Pearry Teo should have opted for the latter. A big movie on a small budget looks cheap, and that’s not the only point where ‘The Gene Generation’ misses the mark.

‘The Gene Generation’ was shot with a budget of 2.5 million dollars, an amount that top actors can’t get out of bed, and it shows. Sets made of scrap metal and colored fluorescent beams, Eastern Bloc quality CGI that should mask the lack of beautiful locations. The first is not a big problem though. The industrial retro design gives the film a high cyberpunk content, although the setting is so lavishly stylized that Bai Ling – an actress who relies mainly on her eccentricity – almost falls apart. Those bad effects are disturbing, and quite a lot. A film in a post-apocalyptic setting requires slick CGI, or at least the creative use of cheaper effects.

Yet the look is not the biggest flaw of ‘The Gene Generation’; that’s the screenplay. The film kicks off with a muddled explanation of the background world of the comic book series, only to get bogged down in a ridiculous storyline surrounding a DNA transcoder that turns humans into a clod of crawling worms. You should not think too long about the scientific explanation for this transformation, although it is funny that Faye Dunaway, the only big name in the film, suffers the same fate. A clod of worms with the eyes of Faye Dunaway, you would rather not look at it. The acting is mediocre across the board, thanks to the lousy dialogues, and the action scenes don’t have much to offer either. Moral of the story: If your ambitions exceed your capabilities, you fall short on all counts.