Mr. Braylon (Richard Zeringue) owns the Just Rite Sugar Company. He’s hired an unethical scientist, Sergei (Armando Leduc), to come up with an additive to sugar that makes it more addictive than cocaine and caffeine combined. His aim is to increase his sales and take over the market. Braylon doesn’t care if there are any side effects.
Sergei uses, what he calls invisible people as test subjects. These are junkies, alcoholics, the homeless and illegals. People that no one would miss should they disappear forever. According to Braylon, they have already disappeared. Whenever a test subject is needed, they are kidnapped and taken to the company’s Shadow Rock Mill, an old, abandoned mill owned by the sugar company.
While kidnapping a young woman named Hannah (Jessica Heap), Braylon's men mistakenly kidnap Ryan (Derrick Denicola). Ryan is the brother of Braylon’s secretary, Erin Theriot (Sharon Landry), and the son of his security chief, Griff Theriot (Louis Herthum). Both Hannah and Ryan are taken to Shadow Rock and become test subjects.
The problem with Braylon’s new sugar is that it contains a virus that turns people into homicidal monsters. Hannah and Ryan become important to the study because they have not become contaminated by the virus. At least so far.
Erin begins receiving mysterious e-mails from someone called Cinderella. The e-mails contain clues as to what happened to Ryan. Through Cinderella, Erin and her father find out that Ryan is still alive and is being held at the Shadow Rock facility. They decide to investigate for themselves and rescue him.
“Mutants” was released in 2008 and was directed by Amir Valinia. It is a low budget American science fiction horror movie.
I spent a lot of time waiting for the mutants AKA zombies. They didn’t show up until the last 25 or so minutes of the movie. When they did, they were very unimpressive. I’ve seen better zombies at Halloween parties. The entire movie is unimpressive. Most of it is told in flashback. The editing is not all that great, and the movie becomes a little confusing. All the way through you are promised lots of action but most of it is about the family dynamic between Griff and his daughter Erin. When you do get to the action it’s, once again, unimpressive. Altogether it was rather disappointing.
Michael Ironside, who usually plays a really good bad guy, or a badass good guy, has top billing but isn’t one of the main characters. Reportedly, he only spent two nights filming. It pretty much looks like it. He spends most of his time in an SUV supposedly talking to someone named Santiago, played by Steven Bauer, on a webcam. Unfortunately, Ironside is getting a little long in the tooth by this time and has difficulty pulling off the action hero vibe.