In the intro we see some facility on lockdown, some girl runs, there's a decapitated body. The girls writes a note when someone grabs her.
FBI agents interview a woman in a wheelchair wearing a mask. She tells us what happened. Now we're taken months back. A molecular biologist (played by Tiffany Shepis!?) gets a job at this facility, owned by some eccentric rich guy. There are armed guards everywhere. Marcus runs the facility and introduces Tiff to the rest of the team: a surgeon, a data information guy, some Indian researcher, and some lady scientist who immediately dislikes Tiff. This group is given free reign to work on a stem cell-based serum to regenerate cells/organs, etc.
They make some progress. Tiff has some outlandish idea. They go ahead and inject Tiff's serum into some piece of rubber on a dish that we're told is supposed to be a heart. Nothing happens. Later they try the upgraded version of the serum. Suddenly the heart starts beating.
There's something else going on at the facility. In a room in a basement they keep girls and the lady researcher extracts embryos from them. One of the girls had a relationship with one the guards. The procedure of extracting her embryo depresses her and she commits suicide. That gives the researchers the idea to try and revive the girl with the serum. And it works. Except that she starts spewing black bile and gets aggressive. So she has to be eliminated.
Suddenly the guard who had a relationship with the girl shows up with a lawyer and demands money to stay silent about what goes on. Marcus shoots them both instead. Again the researchers give smaller amounts of serum to the dead guard, even though he has a huge hole in his head. But sure enough, the serum works. The hole closes up, the guard regains life and consciousness. The lady researcher treats him as her son and teaches him things. The guy, named David--what else, not only learns but does so very quickly. He starts devouring books and gains the skills of clairvoyance, telekinesis, and the ability to turn water into fruit punch. But eventually he flips out and we catch up with the scenes from the intro as he kills everyone he can.
The Prometheus Project is a promising movie. It has a very good idea and an excellent script. Casting is iffy. Shepis in the lead role as a scientist? I don't know. Patti Tindall as the nasty researcher? Not crazy about that one. Some unknown as the David character? Not convincing. It's until we get to tertiary characters like Marcus that we get someone with acting chops in Louis Mandylor. The looks of this movie makes you think you're watching something above a B-movie but audio is problematic and it reminds you, if the casting didn't, that you are watching a B-movie after all. So budget is lacking to take this movie to a level the story deserves. It's also one of those horror movies that makes you wait more than an hour until we get to the horror and gore. Still, it gets you involved and you do care about the outcome.
