Dan Stevens has cultivated a reputation as one of the most reliably underrated actors in the business in everything from X-Men spinoff series Legion to cult classic The Guest, but even his most ardent of fans would struggle to defend the dismal 2017 sci-fi action thriller Kill Switch.
Director Tim Smit shows plenty of ambition, but that ironically turned out to be the movie’s biggest problem. Is it a standard invasion escapade where a rogue band of humans battle back against their extraterrestrial invaders, or a first-person shoot ’em up inspired by video games that echoes the deranged likes of Hardcore Henry? The answer is both, and it’s not great.
Stevens headlines a pilot determined to save both his family and the planet when a military experiment intended to harness the power of unlimited energy goes horribly awry, and that plotline is every bit as derivative as it sounds. In theory, the first-person sequences should freshen things up, but all it does is give the impression that Kill Switch didn’t know what it wanted to be.
In the end, it turned out to be a massive flop after netting a nine percent Rotten Tomatoes score, a 20 percent audience approval rating, and a miserly box office haul of only $163,000. And yet, streaming subscribers have bravely decided to take the plunge and see if Kill Switch is really as bad as claimed, with FlixPatrol naming it as one of the top-viewed titles on iTunes this weekend.
Spoiler alert: it really is that bad.
Published: Feb 11, 2023 01:13 pm