Review of Trancers (1984) by Kiefer F — 24 Sep 2009

I like Full Moon's films, but there is one genre they tackle that usually doesn't register so well with me. While I admire most of their horror films, I tend to dislike the majority of their science fiction movies. Most of them have great ideas behind each story, but the films usually fail to use them in an interesting fashion. And a lot of them tend to drag on and become extremely boring. While Trancers isn't a perfect film, I would say it is one of the few science fiction films from Full Moon that I ended up enjoying, or to say the least was entertained with.

The movie has a unique way of handling time travel. The people in the film who travel back in time don't do so by traditional means, where they physically are transported through time. Instead, the characters "trance," where they are hooked up to some sort of machine, and after being injected with some sort of formula their brain waves are what is sent back through time. These brain waves then connect with an ancestor from the particular time they are traveling back to, and they take control of this person's body without them knowing.

The ludicrously named Jack Deth (Tim Thomerson) is our hero. He has been sent back from the year 2247 to the year 1985, where wanted criminal Martin Whistler (Michael Stefani) has tranced himself to this time and is trying to kill the ancestors of the people running the police force in the future. So the movie ends up feeling like a mix of The Terminator with shades of Blade Runner. A lot of Full Moon's films feel like they are rip-offs of other more successful films, so I wasn't too bothered by this.

The acting in the film is so-so. I don't know if it was the writing or the acting, but I wasn't too fascinated with the character of Jack Deth. He isn't a very exciting character, and the film is really anticlimactic with most of his action sequences. And the rivalry between Deth and Whistler wasn't built up enough, and the payoff was less than stellar. Thomerson did have a few good scenes with his love interest in the film, Leena (Helen Hunt, yes... that Helen Hunt!), and I enjoyed watching the two of them together on screen. Helen Hunt delivered the strongest performance in the film, and had great comedic timing as well.

Trancers isn't particularly exciting, but it isn't boring like most of Full Moon's science fiction films are. It breezes along rather quickly, and doesn't hark too much on things. And I really like the film's use of time travel. There are four more films in the series that I need to watch, and hopefully the other films are able to expand on this different take on time travel, maybe up the action a little and make its characters a little more dynamic.