A shadowy military agency are hunting down the ‘enhanced’, escapees from a secret experiment that has left them with super powers, of sorts. Also hunting these special people is one of their own whom is intent on murdering the rest of them and taking their energy. One of the hunters, George (George Tchortov – Designated Survivour) finds his allegiances questioned when he crosses paths with Anna (Alanna Bale – Killjoys / Cardinal), one of the few subjects left on the run. As the enhanced serial killer draws ever closer, George and Anna must quickly work out exactly who they can and cannot trust.
If Enhanced sounds like a cliched jumble of Heroes, X-Men, and every other generic science-fiction-action property in the market, that’s because that is exactly what it is. At times it feels much more like you’re watching a really long pilot for a new Sy-Fy channel television series. It’s an easy mistake to make, especially as half of the cast are most famous for their appearances on Sy Fy shows like Killjoys. There isn’t anything original within Enhanced, and it’s a shame, as now that the X-Men franchise is over, we could do with a new franchise to take its place.
Writer and director James Mark started his career as a stunt performer and fight choreographer, with a strong background in martial arts, and this is apparent early on as the film feels its most comfortable during the action. There are some fleeting flourishes of interest during these sequences, although the constant barrage of action with little in the way of plot, gets a tad repetitively. Enhanced could have also benefited from another couple of drafts of the script. In addition to the overall story being blandly generic, the dialogue is downright clunky and excruciating. Exchanges are dull and uninspired, and even the most inexperienced of viewers could regularly guess what the next line will be. The film also stumbles into the pitfall of repeating the same old pattern: action, chase, exposition, fight, exposition, chase, fight, hide, exposition and repeat.
The big downfall of Enhanced is that it’s all just a bit dull, bland, and vanilla. Even the colour palette remains the standard sci-fi whites and greys. Then there’s the small matter of the character of George. When we first met him, he is heavily coded as the villain of the piece, but ultimately it becomes impossible to work out whose side he is actually on. The casting causes some irritation as most of the male cast members look the same. A similar phenomena plagued fellow FrightFest film Triggered, but that had a night setting working against it. Here the majority of the film takes place in the daytime and it’s still challenging to tell the difference between at least three of the male cast members, even when they’re standing side-by-side. If this similarity were to have been written into the script, and its were to be clear that genetic enhancement naturally allows for such a thing, then it would have a point of interest. But as this does not appear to be the case, it makes a confused film even more perplexing.
Were Enhanced to be on the telly on a rainy weekend afternoon, it would make for an adequate watch, outside of that it’s just a bland and vanilla repetitive muddle of ideas.
Enhanced was reviewed at Arrow Video FrightFest 2020.
Enhanced
Summary
Sadly not the replacement for The X-Men franchise we had been hoping for, Enhanced is strictly a TV movie affair.
