Body Melt

Residents of a small Australian town are secretly the test subjects of an evil corporation, trying out a strange new drug. Unfortunately, the side effects include melting, exploding, birthing mutant killer babies, and flat out vanishing into thin air.

Body Melt feels scattershot throughout, so I wasn't too surprised to see at the end that it was based on four different short stories by the director. The experimental drug thing mainly seems like an excuse to hang together a bunch of otherwise disconnected scenes of funny, gross-out special effects. And there's not much more to the movie than the effects. The movie feels a little like early Peter Jackson (and I'm not just saying that because of the accents. Not entirely, anyway), but where as the dopey tone of some of Jackson's movies could be charming, here it's a little more groan-inducing. The attempts at humor in the story and dialogue are weak, with most of the laughs coming from the enthusiastic, if unconvincing, special effects. Good news is, there are a lot of these effects, enough to keep you entertained through the brief run time.

Grade: C+