There are plenty of reasons why the video game genre has spent 30 years trying to shake off the tag of being cursed, but one of the earliest offenders that took a sliver of light at the end of the tunnel and immediately shrouded it in darkness was the abhorrent Mortal Kombat: Annihilation.
Paul W.S. Anderson’s 1995 original remains popular to this day as a cult favorite dripping in the most glorious type of cheese, and it held the rare distinction of being both the highest-grossing and best-reviewed feature film to have ever been based on a console property, leading many to think that the maligned medium was finally turning a corner.
However, director John R. Leonetti’s follow-up was the very next contribution to the artform out of the gate when it arrived a little over two years later, where it flipped the script completely on its head. With a four percent score on Rotten Tomatoes, Annihilation was the lowest-rated video game flick ever made at the time, a title it would hold onto with a cast-iron grip for almost a decade until legendarily horrendous filmmaker Uwe Boll dipped his toes in the water with 2003’s House of the Dead.
Following up an entire genre’s top-rated entry ever with its very worst did the video game story’s standing no favors, and it was brutally ironic that it happened with back-to-back Mortal Kombat adventures. Nonetheless, for reasons we can’t reasonably or justifiably explain, the barrel-scraper has returned with a vengeance on streaming.
Per FlixPatrol, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation has set its sights on conquering the Prime Video realm, a decision many viewers will no doubt come to regret given that it makes both the 1995 and 2021 vintages look like The Godfather by comparison.