PROTEUS

Six drug traffickers, due to an accident on their boat, are shipwrecked on an apparently abandoned oil platform. Here they will discover the existence of a secret laboratory that carries out illegal genetic experiments desired by an eccentric billionaire to obtain the elixir of immortality. The six unlucky ones will also discover, to their detriment, that the experiments did not go well and now a terrible formless and fierce being roams the laboratories ready to reap victims. "Proteus" is a horror film with a science fiction backdrop, released in the mid-1990s, that does not have the foundations to be remembered as it does not have its own identity. In fact, the film directed by Bob Keen only manages to sustain its story by copying here and there from old horror and science fiction films like "Alien", "The Alien" but especially from John Carpenter's masterpiece "The Thing", which seems to have inspired this "Proteus" especially regarding the monster, a formless being that does nothing but assimilate its victims to then imitate their physical features and personalities. But, as one can easily imagine, "Proteus" does not come close to the cult film "The Thing" as it fails in any way to recreate those interesting and unsettling atmospheres that characterized Carpenter's film. The screenplay, written by John Brosnan, appears unprofessional, resulting very predictable, dull, and uninteresting, and barely manages to capture the viewer's attention from the beginning. Furthermore, as previously mentioned, it fails in any way to create those unsettling and tension-filled atmospheres that usually characterize films of the genre. The cast, almost entirely made up of C-list actors, includes a few "known" faces, among them Ricco Ross ("Alien") and Doug Bradley ("Cabal", "Hellraiser"), but overall it is rather poor, especially regarding the action-man protagonist, played by Craig Fairbrass, an inexpressible muscle-bound guy who does not fit well with the film and the role. Appreciable is the realization of the monsters; the film indeed offers a decent make-up, some good transformations, and above all, it gives us a rather fascinating final monster, made with mechanical effects, which, although a bit crude, are compelling and evoke the style of the monsters that characterized horror in the eighties. A last weak point of the film can be found in the almost total absence of blood shed, which, apart from in a final scene, is not even seen, so much so that the murders almost always occur off-screen. In conclusion, "Proteus" is a lackluster production that seeks success by drawing from many cult films of horror and science fiction, but which is only a useless and insignificant film. If you feel like spending an evening watching a horror film with a science fiction backdrop, skip this "Proteus" but rewatch John Carpenter's more successful masterpiece. Worth watching but nothing more.