After sitting through four of these distinctly lacklustre 'Creature Feature' movie remakes that were made for television back in 2001, it pained me to watch the last, HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER. Each film has an interesting premise and plenty of potential, but these elements were usually wasted in favour of the mundane. HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER isn't a perfect film by any means but the key difference is that it's actually entertaining for once. From the word go, the story of computer nerds accidentally bringing a monster to life is a lot of fun, with plenty of larger-than-life characters and humour to keep things amusing; I went through a video game stage myself as a teenager (and have probably never really grown out of it) so much of the on-screen antics are also appealing.Ironically, the first half, which is as usual the set-up, is the most interesting, before the second turns into a traditional monster-on-the-rampage flick. The low budget is evident in the use of one single set and the lack of any CGI effects, but the monster itself is a fantastic-looking beast that manages to scare. It assimilates body parts in a similar way to the Jamie Lee Curtis-starrer VIRUS and looks horrendous, which is the point. I loved the sword-and-sorcery edge the film has to it with the use of swords and axes rather than the weaponry which the usual clichéd soldiers-vs-aliens flicks have. The climax plays out as you might imagine, with a moral epilogue of a twist as well, and I sat through it all and found it amiable enough.The cast is fairly interesting and wide-reaching for what is, in essence, a B-movie. Clea Duvall, who I found intensely irritating in the likes of THE FACULTY, is actually passable here; Steven Culp is the established actor of the piece but makes little impact. The three guys playing the nerds are having a lot of fun and are all fine in their parts, with particular note going to Tyler Mane, he of the massive build; Mane later went on to play the hulking hero Ajax in TROY and Michael Myers in Rob Zombie's HALLOWEEN remake. There's also a topless cameo from scream queen Julie Strain, which is the closest this film gets to modern-day B-movies. It's no masterpiece, but I think it achieves what it set out to achieve, which was to create a B-movie for our times with similarities to '50s flicks with added here-and-now updates.

This is one of the most terrible movies I have ever seen. Even for a TV-movie, it's bad. After throwing all shreds of realism out of the window (3 programmers creating a game in a matter of weeks?), they have a few short action sequences before bringing the movie to a close. It felt like some scenes has been cut out of the movie, as Laura immediately going back on her decision was unlikely, to say the least. Horrible acting, bad video game sequences (it felt like Doom or Quake by the graphics and gameplay, which was probably the idea), and a fundamentally flawed idea made this go from a bad movie to a terrible movie very quickly.I wouldn't recommend it, in fact, I'd recommend just about anything else if you were to choose.

How to Make a Monster starts with Faye Clayton (producer Colleen Camp) firing her team of software programmer's when the latest game called 'Evilution' that they are working on receives disastrous test previews & the search is on for a new team. This is where Peter Drummond (Steven Culp), Bug (Jason Marsden), Hardcore (Tyler Mane) & the obligatory black guy Sol (Karim prince) step in & take over. The brief is they need to turn 'Evilution' into a really scary game in one month, if they succeed they will earn a $1 million bonus, Clayton also gives them intern Laura Wheeler (Clea DuVall) as a general dogsbody. How to Make a Monster then cuts to 'Three Weeks Later' as the game nears completion, Hardcore has designed the weapons & monsters, Bug has developed the music & sound effects & Sol has programed a new form of artificial intelligence while Peter does what bosses do. One night a lightning strike causes a power overload which in turn makes a motion capture suit come to life & start acting out 'Evilution' as if it were real. Peter, Laura, Sol, Bug & Hardcore all become targets of the killer game & it's robotic suit...Written & directed by George Huang I personally thought How to Make a Monster was a very poor attempt at horror. The script has no relation to the original How to Make a Monster (1958) apart form it's title, there are so many things fundamentally wrong with this film it's untrue. The whole concept sucks & Huang obviously doesn't know anything about technology as How to Make a Monster has no factual basis or notion of reality at all, motion capture suits coming to life? How can it walk & operate before it kills Sol? How can the mainframe computer control it with no visible wires? Radio control, I don't think so. Only three people to program one game? These days it takes dozens of talented programmer's to develop a good game & a hell of a lot longer than a month. I could go on, but I won't. The title How to make a Monster refers to the films hidden meaning, the moral message if you will. You see How to Make a Monster is all about people turning into monsters because of greed, jealousy & ambition. I bet Huang thought he was really clever coming up with that double meaning title. The characters are uniformly unlikable & clichéd, Sol & Bug in particular are highly irritating to endure. Technically How to Make a Monster isn't too bad considering it's TV limitations, director Huang fails to create any sort of tension or atmosphere which is what a good horror film is all about. The kills are all off screen & have no build up whatsoever, when at the end it finally looks as if we might get a decent sequence involving the monster the film keeps cutting to awful in game computer footage, maybe to save money? It breaks up & dilutes any sort of excitement the climatic fight might had, very poor. There are a few computer game/film references, an Evil Dead video game poster keeps turning up in the background, a Tales From the Crypt pinball machine & a scene where the monster rips someones head off complete with dangling spinal cord which obviously is meant to pay homage to Mortal Kombat & it's infamous gory 'Fatalities'. As a whole the violence is restrained with the aforementioned head & spinal cord ripping, another severed head & a cut off hand. The monster itself as it adds bits of human bodies to itself looks pretty cool but is barely used, it's past the 40 minute mark before it does anything. The acting is poor from all involved & watch out for actress Julie Strain who complains about having to go nude, again considering her other work I suppose director Huang thought this would be a funny in joke of some sort. It isn't. Overall there really isn't anything by which I can recommend How to Make a Monster & in actual fact I think it should be retitled to How to Make a Monstrosity of a Film. One to avoid.

Wow! How bad was that? Really bad! I mean, all it was, was a bloody, swearing crap-fest where some how in the end the moral is "You have to turn into a cold sarcastic jerk to succeed!" Yay! What kind of crap is that? I watched this movie because I wanted to see a good slash-em-up horror film but what I got was a poorly-made piece of crap. The "monster" was cheesy and the violence was dull. There was no scary moments at all. And I think the characters' favorite words were "s***" and "f***". This is one of those "late-night-HBO-movies that they show because there's nothing else" kind of movies. Please, don't waste your time watching this crap-shoot. I did. And I'm sorry I wasted an hour and a half of my life. 0/10.