If nothing else, the existence of Nemesis 3: Time Lapse (aka. Nemesis 3: Prey Harder), proves that Albert Pyun had a sense of tenaciousness that far out-reached his actual talent – after all, it only exists because this prince of of low budget deck managed to film both this and Nemesis 2 back to back in order to stretch his budget way beyond breaking point.
If I’m being inordinately kind, the first two Nemesis movies certainly had their problems, but if you were willing to forgive a multitude of sins, they both were amusing slices of no-budget, sci-fi shlock that where about as easy to decipher as a word search written in Latin. However, while you could argue that the first Nemesis had too much plot, Nemesis 3 is immediately hamstrung by the fact that there’s barely an hours worth of movie here and the finished product features more obvious padding than the jock strap of Spinal Tap’s bassist. Throw in a returning Tim Thomerson, stunningly awful visual effects, a brain damaged, bodybuilding freedom fighter and two glowing, giggling robot assassins who look like Lady Gaga and you have an impressive recipe for disaster.
To give you a quick update as to the current status of Nemesis’ confused timeline, the status quo is as follows: in 2077, cyborgs have conquered the Earth and in an attempt to save mankind, a baby loaded with super-DNA was blasted back in time to the 80’s where she grew up to become the impressively muscled Alex Rain. After the robots weirdly send a cyborg bounty hunter codenamed: Nebula after her when she’s old enough to defend herself, Alex managed to defeat it while everything blew up – the end.
Woah, woah, woah… where are you going? We’re not done yet, because Nemesis 3 starts (after an excruciatingly long amount of flashbacks to the last film) with Alex lying, bloodied, in the middle of the African desert with a bullet in the back of her skull.
She awakes and immediately stirs up our jealousy by having no memory of the previous film (lucky cow) thanks to the fact that the bukket that went through her skull “erased her brain”. However, help is at hand in the shape of a man who introduces himself as Farnsworth 2 who, thanks to his habit of repeatedly morphing into a staggeringly awful CG robot, is obviously a Cyborg and is actually as benevolent as a wolverine on PCP. While he repeatedly attempts to scan her with his weird-ass, glowing eyes, we’re subjected to a full thirty minutes of Alex staggering about the place and going in and out of consciousness as we’re bombarded with nearly a full twenty minutes of footage from Nemesis 2 but bizarrely presented in non-chronological order.
However, once the plot actually starts, we flashback again to 22 hours earlier as we hope to find out how Alex ended up with a bullet hole parting her white girl dreadlocks.
Rest assured, amnesia ends up being way more preferable…
While watching Nemesis 3: Time Lapse, you can’t help but wonder if even Albert Pyun knows what’s supposed to be going on as the main story threads collide into one another with no real interest in continuity or logic. Take, for example, the return of Tim Thomerson as an upgraded model of his villain from Nemesis 1 and who happily introduces himself as Farnsworth 2, despite the fact he’s trying to keep a low profile. However, Thomerson’s character wasn’t even mentioned in Nemesis 2 which has the most tenuous connections to the first movie, so his inclusion is less a revelation and more just… odd. Its certainly just as odd as the strange, random bursts of ugly, distracting, visual effects that Pyun insists on including at the slightest whim. A one point, the director actually stages a car chase with two jeeps that is rendered close to unwatchable thanks to the decision to cover both vehicles in blobby, cheap effects in a attempt to make things desperately seem futuristic but the regrettable result is that the viewer may actually fear that they’ve suffered a stroke. Elsewhere, Thomerson has the indignity of having super-cheesy eye beams suddenly zap from his eyes during moments of dialogue as he tries to scan bodybuilder turned actor, Sue Price’s still impressive physique and other characters randomly glow, despite the fact that they’re supposed to be passing as humans.
As distracting as all this is, it’s somehow not as distracting as some of Pyun’s dialogue that often is so lamentable, it verges on the surreal. “This man was strange.” muses Alex as Farnsworth 2 wanders around, sporting glowing eyeballs, “But there were many strange men in Africa.”. See? There’s a rational explanation for everything. Later in the film, one of the immensely annoying, platinum-haired assassins utters the legend: “I don’t want your shit! I want your molecules!” – which handily also might be the director’s stance on the type of women he stuffs his movies with.
In fact, Pyun seems so preoccupied filling the movie with ripped chicks in ripped clothing, he frequently lets virtually ever aspect of his own universe get away from him. If these cyborgs are near invulnerable killing machines, how is it that Alex defeats one by poking it in the eye with her finger like one of the Three Stooges and another audibly howls in pain when his hair is pulled. As the movie rattles on to its muddled, cop out conclusion that threatens that legion of dangling plot threads will be resolved in Nemesis 4 (spoiler: they weren’t), Pyun throws yet more plot onto the fire as his cock-eyed franchise gets denser by the second. Alex is revealed to have a sister who is – you guessed it – muscled and wearing a tank top and urges her to procreate to save the human race; the villainous Nebula from the last film resurrects and takes form as a human woman who is – you guessed it again – also muscled and wearing a tank top and poses as Alex’s other sister; Alex starts up a truly squirm-inducing romance with Johnny, the ex-freedom fighter who, after a head injury, looks like Fabio but sounds like a particularly confused four year-old. However, ever single one of these fairly important points are dropped in favour of yet another galling attempt as sequel bait that unsurprisingly didn’t pay off. We don’t even find out who shot her…
I mean we did get a Nemesis 4, but anyone who actually was desperate to find out what happens to any of these hard bodied, chunk-heads (assuming such a film-goer even exists) will find that they’re shit out of luck – pretty much like everyone else who watched it then, I guess.
Time Lapse? Try judgement lapse.
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