Super Hybrid (2011)

As you may have guessed from the cover, this is another car gone bad movie. This car not only can repair itself, but can change into another type of vehicle. The low budget aspect of this film only allows us to "see" the morph once. Most of the time we just see it as one car one moment, then when the camera goes back, it is suddenly a different car! Oh the magic of cinema! Unlike Christine this car kills indiscriminately.

When the car was in an accident it is towed to the police garage where the night crew must combat the vehicle. Shannon Beckner stars as Tilda, a female mechanic with a jobless boyfriend, a nephew (Ryan Kennedy) who also works at the garage and their overbearing boss, Ray (Oded Fehr of various Mummy and Resident Evil movies ). We all want to see him die next. He provides the inner conflict within the crew because harmony in battling a man eating car isn't enough drama.

Tilda comes to work in her tank top and puts on a dark blue work shirt. After an incident involving said car, the blue work shirt suddenly disappears and she is back in the tank top. Oh the magic of Anchor Bay movies!

(Plot spoiler?) They manage to get the hood pried open and lo and behold we have the film's meager special effects as we see some sort of creature lives under the hood. They surmise this creature has evolved while living along side of a road, to the point it can change forms for hunting humans. Ray doesn't want any help hunting this creature, and prefers that the garage mechanics do it to the dismay of Tilda. Melanie Papalia, as the secretary is the other eye candy of this film for those who like fish nets.

The acting was good considering the weak plot and being an Anchor Bay movie. No Mercedes were harmed in the making of this film.

No sex. No nudity. I don't recall any F-bombs, but don't hold me to it.

Enjoyable low budget creature feature. A few old cars and a parking garage and voila! a movie. Very surprised by this movie not expecting much but I liked the premise of creatures hunting in the form of cars. If you like monsters get this movie.

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Initially, I thought I was going to hate this movie. It top-loaded itself with far too many irritants than necessary all leveled at the main character (Shannon Beckner). She's up against a lazy boyfriend with back problems too severe to do work yet not bad enough to keep him from pumping iron, a snarky boss (overplayed by Oded Fehr), a snotty secretary with no room to cast disapproval on another woman when she shows up to work wearing fishnet stockings, friends/coworkers more than willing to throw her under the bus by suggesting that all her faculties aren't working on full power. And, as if that wasn't enough, she is the only clear thinker when it comes to battling a man-eating car.

Most of the decisions made during the course of this movie are questionable, like welding shut the only emergency exit because it serves the plot better than the reality of the situation (this would be illegal and since this is a police compound......!). They also get the bright idea to trap the beastie car because it might be worth money (this, after two coworkers have already gone missing, presumed dead). It also didn't help that most of the scenes are shot at night and in an underground garage poorly lit (they even face the impending loss of emergency lighting and are, at one point, literally in the dark). Half of the mayhem was difficult to see (especially the first two killings). I appreciate this was low budget, but that didn't mean they should skimp on ingenuity, there are ways of depicting things without the aid of special effects. In this case, seeing nothing meant nothing.

But. For all that and more, I still really enjoyed this movie; enough to want to keep it for future viewings. It lands in that gray area where, if your expectations are high, you might be disappointed, or, with lower expectations (like mine), it served its purpose on a basic level: entertainment. I grew to like it after a rocky start.

This was an impulse purchase and I'm not sorry I took a chance and bought it.

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You have to admit the premise behind SUPER HYBRID---a killer car that's really a tentacled monster and can transmorph into any kind of car it wants is promising. What could possibly go wrong?

Pretty much everything.

After a pretty neat opening, the movie makes the mistake of shifting the rest of the film to a poorly lit police garage, and basically turning it into a chase movie. Had the car remained on the streets killing random victims, it might have been a winner.

The characters in the garage are stock stereotypes who do stupid things at every opportunity. And of course ever since Sigourney stripped to a tee in ALIEN, 99% of all horror movies make the macho woman the hero/heroine and the males spineless wimps. The ending comes out of nowhere and makes little sense.

SUPER HYBRID is embarrassingly fun to watch, even though the acting is pretty bad, especially Oded Fehr's hammy badass boss.

So, lower your expectations and go along for the ride.

Want Super Hybrid (2011) Discount?

Because The Car is one of my favorite guilty-pleasure horror movies, the reference to that movie and the plot summary quickly caught my attention. I was also looking forward to seeing the car depicted on the cover.

Unfortunately, the car shown on the cover is not in the movie. Apparently it was just shown due to its resemblance to a futuristic version of the Lincoln in The Car (check out the POV of the cover shot and the grills on both vehicles and draw your own conclusion).

The concept and some of the details (the feel of the vehicle's finish and the theory of how the vehicle became a hunter on wheels) made up for the stupidity of the characters trapped in the garage with this killing machine.

The effects weren't bad for the most part, but some were poor. Also, there was a scene where the first garage mechanic is killed and it isn't really clear (even if you play it back again) where the body landed. Since this location becomes important to the movie, you'd think the establishing shots would have been done better.

The acting was good, even though a few of the characters were a bit cliche.

Like KITT in the recent Knight Rider Season One, the killer vehicle in this one didn't really seem to have any personality. Unlike The Car, none of the characters, stunts or kills are memorable.

So what's my recommendation? Although this movie is not as exciting or interesting as The Car, I have to admit I did enjoy it and I'm sure I'll watch it again. If you like The Car and Christine (Special Edition) order your own Super Hybrid and take it for a test drive. Mileage may vary, but you'll enjoy the ride!

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