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i must have seen a different film!!

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Every so often i have the opportunity to see a movie which isn't highly rated. Monolith (1993) was rated 4.3 at IMDb. This score is a lot higher than it really deserves. As a sci-fi fan, i don't care to much if a plot or props and such are unconvincing. Even the acting isn't a real issue for me. This film had a good plot (even if it is a bit stale) and the acting wasn't bad. So why the low score? Well, there are several things in this movie which destroy the immersion i'd like to get from a sci-fi movie. I'll give three examples. In the beginning of the movie, a 'deranged' woman tries to kill a young boy. She chases the boy in a car while the boy is running away. According to the sounds of the engine of the car, she's driving high speed and the car is moving really fast. Yet the boy, on foot, not really very fast, manages to keep ahead of the chasing car, nonetheless (1). He ducks into an alley and the car chases behind him. You can see the boy running in the ally with the car in the background. (The car isn't moving at all). The camera switches into the car and it's moving very fast (2). At the end of the movie the main characters jump from the departing flying saucer which flies at the top of the skyscrapers. Their drop only lasts about a second (3). The movie has lots of things like the three examples i've mentioned which made the movie an utter disappointment to me. Perhaps i've been spoiled during the years but if your wise, skip this movie and save yourself time for more pleasurable things to watch.

Detectives Tucker (Bill Paxton) and Flynn (Lindsay Frost) individually stumble upon an out-of-this-world case when they both spot a deranged woman chasing down a young boy with her car and then shooting him dead. Things get messy when the Department of Historical Research boss Villano (John Hurt) shows up and takes the woman away (according to the screenplay, he has a higher security rating than the President) from police chief Mac (Lou Gossett, Jr.). Naturally, two curious and rule breaking detectives won't be having any of this and begin to investigate. But the bigger question is will these two cantankerous cops get along? Folks seem to peg this as an X-FILES ripoff, but that is hard to swallow because it was filming before that show debuted. It is more LETHAL WEAPON with aliens. Director John Eyres and screenwriter Stephen Lister had some marginal direct-to-video success with PROJECT: SHADOWCHASER so Shapiro-Glickenhaus maybe wanted a piece of that. It is nice seeing Paxton getting a film to carry on his own at this time (he previous did with THE VAGRANT), but the budget just isn't there for this one. Introvision handled the FX and some of them are really rough. It is a shame because I could totally get behind a "LETHAL WEAPON with aliens" film (well, I guess I have THE HIDDEN, which this closely resembles). John Hurt appears to have only done a day or two on this as his scenes in the last half have him isolated in shots (even including his major role in the finale).

Very likely John Eyres' most ambitious movie to date. A sci-fi/action/horror/thriller hybrid populated with good folks like Bill Paxton, John Hurt, Louis Gosset Jr., gorgeous B-vamp Musetta Vander and Lindsay Frost (who somewhat comes across as the wisecracking tough blonde acting equivalent of Yancy Butler). A secret government agency has been fooling around with an alien entity. Of course, the thing gets loose and starts to run amok in the city. Well, "running" isn't exactly the right word, since it's more like some form of alien energy that possesses the bodies of humans (that eventually do all the running). It's up to Paxton, Frost & Gosset to figure out what is loose in their city and try to stop it. The plot kind of looses itself along the way, not really knowing where to aim things and eventually not bothering to explain itself anymore. The film ends ridiculously, but before that we do get to see some nifty alien set designs. The SFX are pretty decent at times. For fans of Jack Sholder's "The Hidden" (1987), this might be another amusing watch (though Sholder's film is much tighter & better).

The reference to Starsky & Hutch by another viewer is brilliant. This movie has no story, but, instead, seems to have been pieced together with bits and pieces pulled from Hollywood's vast supply of garbage cans. Bill Paxton does his usual out-of-control-but-I'm-really-hurtin'-inside schtick. Lindsay Frost's hair stays miraculously manageable, despite her being blown into a pool, shot at on a high-rise terrace, and (why do they subject us to this schlock?) diving into sewage. Both actors serve as the other's straight-man to hackneyed one-liners that are as predictable as the victims. Just who or what this alien with eyeballs that shoot fireballs is... or wants... is never explained, nor do we have any idea what the goon scientists have been doing with/at it all these years. I paid 20 cents for the video of this film on the streets of Seoul. I think I was ripped off.