“Hardcore is my real name. I had it legally changed a year ago.”

Justin’s rating: I used to be the CEO of Copy ROM. We made dozens of dollars. Dozens!

Justin’s review: During Halloween 2001, Cinemax — the forbidden fruit of basic cable — ran a series of five special-made movies that it called Creature Features. Produced by legendary monster designer Stan Winston, these films were modern remakes of ’50s B-movie classics. I do have plans to get around to all of these, but I’m going to start with what seems like the most intriguing: How to Make a Monster.

And what is intriguing about it? It’s because this movie tries to tackle video games and video game development from the perspective of someone who doesn’t know much about either but is sure that they’re terribly bad like drugs or puppy murder. Heck, the title of this game is — and I am telling you with a straight face here — Evilution.

As ironically entertaining as it is to hear screenwriters with a tenuous grasp of video games lecture us about them, anything to do with Evilution is fakey as all get out. I can imagine the writers interviewing his sarcastic nephew about game lingo and being fed a lot of hooey.

After a poor test screening, the company hires squad of wildly unqualified ego trips to punch up Evil-lution and make it as scary as possible. There’s a gigantic paranoid muscle freak who played Sabertooth in X-Men, a walking nerd caricature named “Bug,” a pile of human arrogance who speaks like a self-help book and constantly plays with metal balls, and a corporate suit so sleazy that Carter Burke would volunteer him as alien tribute.

Perhaps because they lack a project lead (or any other employees), these four dweebs end up fighting over the game and paving the way for the  in-game AI to take shape by inhabiting a motion capture suit. Watching over them is company intern Laura, who’s played by many emos’ late-90s crush, Clea DuVall (The Faculty).

Just in case you weren’t prepared for the depths of this movie’s subtext, the “monster” that’s being made here isn’t just this realized game beast but also sweet Laura who is told she has to become ruthless or something in order to make it in the cutthroat world of five-person video game studios.

But mostly the monster’s about this evolving suit that’s a little like the Borg in that it keeps assimilating the people it kills and incorporating them into the mechanics. Locked inside the studio, the survivors try to outwit the game-controlled being. There’s some genuine freaky visuals at play with the upgraded suit, reminding me a lot of Jamie Lee Curtis’ underrated Virus.

Now get this: Everyone but Laura doesn’t want to shut down the game — and thus disable the suit — because they’d lose all the data and then the project. So the goal is to kill the creature, save the game, and make a cool million dollars in the process. Wanna bet that the only girl in this film will end up as the Final Girl?

In a hilarious twist, instead of fighting the creature in real life, they decide that the only way to kill it is to beat it in the game itself. While, you know, trying not to die as it stalks them.

I’m not familiar at all with the 1958 original (which, I assume, had nothing to do with video games), but this remake isn’t awful? Idiotic video game discussions and portrayals aside, the patchwork monster is genuinely freaky at times, and everyone’s having a little too much fun overacting. How to Make a Monster isn’t so much a B-movie as maybe a C-movie, but it’s got it’s moments.

And Clea DuVall.

Intermission!

• Such strong Terminator vibes with this robotic opening
• Nice Diablo game reference (and I’m pretty sure you can change your name to that even if the game exists)
• “Who sent you? Micro Sync? Copy ROM?”
• Why does he need a whole bunch of fake weapons to work?
• Ahhh one of those tiny folding keyboards that people used for like two minutes in the 2000s!
• “This is silly, there’s no plugin for virtual goggles, cyber gloves!”
• “Last I checked, the 13th amendment abolished slavery!”
• “If you want to make it in this world, you’ve got to be PFD — programmed for damage.”
• The Evil Dead video game poster is on the wall of the studio
• “You have to be mean to make the green.”
• The Julie Strain cameo
• That is the dumbest outfit with partial nudity I’ve ever seen
• Did they just kill evil Pikachus?
• Pac-Man was a metaphor for the ’80s, apparently
• Try not to cringe any time you see or hear “GAME ON!” in this movie
• Maybe call the cops because of the dead body?
• Back when email used a lot of color and 45-point fonts, I guess
• That suit is super-stealthy when it wants to be
• In the middle of death and destruction is a good time to try for a pity kiss
• Jeremy has quite the sideburns
• That CGI fireball is so slow that two characters have enough time to turn around in vents and crawl away from it
• You kiss him AFTER he’s dead? That’s poor consolation.
• Wait, she uses a video game controller to fight him?
• VR headsets make you better at a game for some reason
• No Palm Pilot had that kind of video capability
• Dang, she shoots him just to shut him up, I love it
• SHE KILLS THE FISHIES
• Satan Clause (not scary)