Questionably competent kickboxing attorney Darby (Brey Noelle, Nightmare Neighborhood Moms) has a new roomie. It’s her shitty dad (Jim Azelvandre, The Exorcism of Saint Patrick), an aggressively repugnant human being who looks like a Factory 2-U version of J.K. Simmons.
One morning, instead of bragging to his daughter about the scent on his hand after a sexual encounter, he’s uncharacteristically sharing positive words and breakfast burritos. As Darby confides to her bartending best friend (KateLynn E. Newberry, Juror #2), it’s as if her father’s been pod-peopled.
Because, duh, he has; the title out front shoulda told ya.
I watched Replicator by virtue of I See You appearing among writer/director Mark Andrew Hamer’s IMDb credits. That 2019 sleeper is gripping, thrilling, chilling and, sad to say, other things this chunk of weird science is not. The two films exist on different planes of skill and execution … which made sense once I read more carefully: Hamer served as an executive producer of that film versus the pure creative force here.
Still, Replicator deserves to be judged on its own, not how it stands against something else. Awash in visually pleasant purples and pinks, it strives for a pulp greasiness that Hamer’s dialogue is too jokey to meet. Even if it were, Newberry would be the only cast member I’d trust to do it justice because as is, her fellow actors don’t perform as much as recite — and stiffly at that.
Aside from the impressive oozing, gooey effects — most notably the wall of throbbing scabs, veins, tumors, whatever — the movie falls short of its elements’ collective ambition. Not just by a mile, but the next town over. One character says it best with a rhetorical “Are we really doing this right now?”
They are, but you can skip it, unless bellybutton tentacle protrusions are your thing. —Rod Lott