I rent DVD's to pass the time on airplanes. Sadly, staring out at the clouds would have been better entertainment than this. I am not the best movie critic....I don't want to have to go back to college to figure out what a movie is about. In this Chaos, I didn't know if I was watching a psycho describe an event in real time, a past event, or a delusion that was only in his mind. This reminds me of Jacob's Ladder.....you never really knew what you were watching. The slow motion scenes in the spa were disjointed, and painfully slow to get through. If there was any sense at all of hot, sweaty panic, it was lost with the switching back to a particularly unappealing Val Kilmer sitting at an empty table staring into space. Finally, the ending was exactly the sort of finish I hate. You can guess and make presumptions, but you really have absolutely no idea what you just watched.
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huskiefan-111 July 2009
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transient-225 June 2009The story unfolds as a mentally ill professor (Val Kilmer) confesses to a newspaperman and later a detective, that he's holding a group of men and women hostage in a steam room; they were lured there with the offer of a dating service, and now the hot steam will slowly kill them by dissolving their lungs if the professor's theories about global warming are not printed in the paper. We're not entirely sure if these victims are being held, if they're already dead, or if Val Kilmer's character is merely delusional; unfortunately, in confusing our understanding of reality and the passage of time, the film altogether removes us from the feeling of suspense.
Presumably the intent is to show how social constraints and civilized behavior will collapse into chaos under pressure, since the victims all become infantile and turn on each other in flashbacks. In this case however the pressure seems pretty damn mild - the victims are sweating in a steam room from the very beginning, so all they can really do is sweat more. We add a little more steam, and they pant. Now they look tired. They make tortured faces at each other, quietly lamenting a lack of iced tea. But since the scenes are intercut with police interviews outside, we lose the feeling of claustrophobia, and the conflict between the victims seems inexplicable; it's implied they've already been compromised by their own neuroses but we haven't seen enough of these characters to mark their descent - all we see are silly histrionics. Just as annoying, the film relies on the stereotype of Italian-Americans as insensitive mobster-types; roughly sketched in the cretinoid detective, this crystallizes completely when an imprisoned restaurateur instantly transforms to a misogynistic brute, calling each woman a 'b*tch" and just attacking someone. He tries to escape by smashing the locked door and you'd think this action would be welcome, but for unknown reasons it causes violence among them. One scene jumps out as especially bizarre. We hear the operatic strains of 'comrades being slain on the battlefield' music as the victims simply look at each other in desperation for more than five full minutes, in slow-motion. At the end of this montage, one woman just stands up and cuts her own throat with a shard of glass. She could no longer endure the agony of waiting in the sauna.
The conclusion attempts to outline some relationship that Kilmer has with another mad, diabolical doctor as an accomplice. I'm not sure why, and I'll abstain from offering any interpretation of this conclusion, since it struck me as utterly nonsensical. -
sipovic13 July 2009Unfortunately, this movie is a fail. Especially unfortunately because Val Kilmer acted awesome. This movie is separated on two parts - first happened in interview room where Kilmer is interrogated by Assante and second happened in the same time in the steam room between six other people. And as much I enjoyed really good Kilmer\Assante scenes as much I disliked steam room. Except cute steam effect and and yellow color of screen all rest there was very predictable for this genre - screaming, yelling and everybody went crazy one by one as usual. Boredom. And Eric Robert unfortunately dissolved among nameless actors there. Combining it with pretty ambiguous plot with very dissatisfying twist plot in the end this movie really hasn't a chance. Val Kilmer couldn't save it.
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Floop19773 December 2010Let's keep this short and sweet. This movie is a total disaster. The plot makes no sense at all. The acting is dreadful. The writing is appalling. The music is absurd. The production must have been disastrous, as the movie is only 90 minutes long yet there are an enormous amount of padded super-slow-motion scenes. One scene was over FIVE MINUTES LONG, of nothing but actors gurning in slow motion while some pompous over-bearing music droned on. The ending is ridiculous. All in all, a total fail of a movie. I would have rather watched adverts for 90 minutes. The people involved in making this should never be allowed to make another movie again.
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dukebrazi25 June 2009Even if I got frustrated with almost all the characters at some points I can't blame it on poor acting. They were acting their parts.
This is a mystery/thriller vehicle with good actors trapped in bad writing.
In the very first minutes of the movie, the main antagonist is honoring his mentor proclaiming how much he is ahead of his time. He's years ahead of his time, no, he's light-years ahead of his time.. After that he goes on about how the protagonist doesn't have the intellectual capacity for his task. It got me thinking.. "light-years" is not a measure of time, it's a measure of distance. Sure maybe the antagonist could be kinda slow but it didn't look like they were going for that in the movie. Sure, you could say that someone is ahead of others by "miles" or something like that but it doesn't really matter to me. I thought it was kinda dumb and that is what I thought of the movie as well. I really like Val Kilmer and I really hate that I so often see him i movies like this.
If this is broadcast on TV and you can't fall to sleep - it's worth the watch. But that's being generous. -
Frepa12 January 2010Like someone else said already; you can't blame the actors for the way this movie turned out. If it says in the script to scream 90% of the time without pretty much any reason, you just do so. Apart from the script, what makes this movie one of the most terrible things I have seen so far, is the way it has been "stapled" together. The director has no clue about how to set an atmosphere, the editor has no clue about how to avoid being extremely annoying. Maybe one acceptable thing in this movie was the music,... but even that seemed to be a bit too random and misplaced.
This movie is so terribly slow in every aspect of the word, that it is extremely hard not to stop it without even waiting to see how it ends. I had to watch it with 4 pauses. Not because it was scary or overwhelming, but because it is simply an annoying and time wasting movie. Avoid it, please. Do yourself a favor and go rent an Uwe Boll movie, even those are better than this, and that says a lot.
I still give this movie 2 stars because I admire the actors for not burning the film before it was released. -
sddavis633 January 2011This movie is also known as "The Chaos Experiment" - and I thought that alternative title really sums this up quite well. It's really quite a chaotic movie which has much greater potential than it ever came close to fulfilling. Val Kilmer plays a man named Jimmy who as the movie opens walks into a newspaper office and tells the editor that unless his story about global warming is printed, he's going to kill 6 people he has locked up inside a steam room by turning up the heat, so to speak, to demonstrate the chaos that will erupt between them and show what he believes is going to eventually happen in the world due to global warming. The movie then goes back and forth from Jimmy to the steam room, as he's questioned by a cop played by Armand Assante who tries to find out where the 6 are.
The premise is somewhat interesting. One of the major problems with the movie, though, is that - aside from the plight they find themselves in - there's no particular reason given to care for any of the six in the steam room. The characters are never really fleshed out, aside from a very brief introduction they give to each other in the movie's early stages, before they realize their situation. So we get a few seconds of each giving us their likes and dislikes and telling us where they're from. But for this movie to really work, we need to know more about them; we need to care about them - and frankly, we don't. There's even suspicion throughout (probably deliberate) about whether any of it is actually true, or whether it's just a delusion inside Jimmy's head.
The idea was interesting. It just didn't work very well. -
solon-stewart18 December 2010Terrible. Terrible. Terrible. I asked my neighbor for a movie to borrow. He has been watching the classics like The Shining. He proceeds to give me this piece of crud. I'm kinda mad at him for that. This was literally one of the worst movies I have ever seen. Just a bunch of disjointed scenes of the steam bath and then a dumb looking Kilmer twitching around with some lame horny cop. They just had this one girl take off her top just to show some boobs. No point to the story, no real reason for it, except for having nudity. And what was the point of the experiment anyways? If it got hot people would not just start going completely bonkers and killing each other. They would try to get out. And that rarely happened. No one died from the heat (which Val Kilmer kept harping on...Do you know what happens at 130 deg? Your Lungs melt, your eyes explode.) I knew it was going to be terrible just looking at the cover, and once it started i realized within the intro music. For some reason i watched the whole movie, only to see it end with some dumb ending that tries to have a big twist that makes you think. The only thing it made me do was boo. And I was in my bedroom. Please, save yourself 90 minutes, and never watch this film. boo
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oprlvr336 October 2009Though I live in the area this movie was filmed, I remained objective from its beginning to end. Not a bad movie for Kilmer... similar to Robin Williams' attempt at creating a deranged psycho, opposite his comic days (One Hour Photo.) Sadly, there were a few key moments that dragged, like when Jimmi and Mancini meet up the first time, and a couple times during what was assumed the dramatic interrogation process. I didn't really see the chemistry connection from Kilmer to Assante, though it was nice to see Assante in such a lead role again. And he certainly did justice to his part.
Most of the key cast were great in their roles. And it was certainly impressive to see Kilmer achieve such a believable psychotic role. -
TheSoundAndMusicGuy12 December 2011The good:
Kilmer pulls off a fairly believable psychopath, and there are some really great performances from those in the steam room, although they sometimes border on the "over-dramatic" rather than "convincing".
The music is not bad too, always reflective of the mood without becoming too invasive to the action on screen.
The bad:
Firstly, some of the scenes are quite drawn out with no sense of progression. Some of the steam room scenes are difficult to stick with, in particular one excessively long scene towards the end of the film. During this scene I looked at my watch to see how long was left on the viewing time - not a good sign if I was meant to be engrossed in the story.
Secondly, the method which the story unfolds seems fairly underwhelming. It felt as though there was more potential for the plot to thicken, particularly from those in the steam room. The captives also seem to have their own designated "turn" at falling apart/going mad, which is overall quite unconvincing and ultimately predictable.
So in conclusion, there are some good scenes, but this is not a film I will actively recommend to friends. -
Bob_the_Hobo19 December 2010Surprised by how much I actually enjoyed a cast that included three former Gods who are failing nowadays-Val Kilmer, Eric Roberts, and Armand Assante. It doesn't seem like they can even get a credit in a theatrical release anymore.
Kilmer plays a mad-scientist type of doctor who walks into a newspaper and announces to the editor that he has six people trapped in a steam room (at 130 degrees), and he'll only let them out if the secret to global warming is let out, presumably by him. The editor calls Assante's character -a cop- for help, and so begins a long, arduous process, with nods to the people trapped inside (including Roberts) slowly losing it because of the heat.
Again, a surprisingly enjoyable film. The twists and turns, while a bit confusing, were on the whole intriguing and involving. The acting is really, really good, especially by the aforemented trio. Kilmer has put on considerable weight but ironically this added to his mystery. Assante does a great job as the cop, one of his best performances in years probably. Ditto for Roberts.
I wasn't looking for too much but all in all I found "The Chaos/Steam Experiment" an involving and interesting little mystery. Definitely a recommended DTV flick for your buck. -
mdarmocida16 January 2010I agree with almost all the reviews. The movie, which did keep my interest and was worth a watch, wasn't the best I've ever seen. However, nobody seems to get the ending. The doctor at the hospital (and his wife) were the two people that survived the steam room. They survived because they were plants and working with Val Kilmer. They were in the steam room as part of the experiment to see (and be) the human chaos up front. So the third to last surviver was correct (and not delusional) when he suspected them. Apparently, this doctor became interested in Val Kilmer's experiment and chose to help him carry it out. However, the doctor's motives were not to stop global warming but to better understand by being a part of the human social breakdown (either that or he and his wife were just out for some sick thrills).
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trashgang9 September 2010I have seen posters and trailers for this flick. Even fangoria had an article about this dreg. The attention was out there because three actors from the eighties were in it, Val Kilmer, Armand Assante and Eric Roberts. Val is playing the main role. He's the villain, but what a performance he gives. Really, the fall of an icon, the fall of batman (you get it?). The only thing he has to do is stair into the camera or sitting at a table at a police office. One let down. So far I haven't seen a flick from Philippe Martinez. And I never will do it again. This is just tedious. It's more about Val then about the experiment. Oh yes, they promise that the experiment will take two days so lungs will explode and eyes will crystallize. But none of that happen. And even the performances in the sauna are a big let down. Eric Roberts was never one of my favorites and here again he shows me why. All we get in the sauna is a bit of arguments and a slashing throat, some fights and the best thing, but that's for later. Even all of that is so wooden, the blood flows a bit but never is frightening or whatever. There is a scene with a nail gun machine. You see the machine, You see the face of the scary girl, then it's bang bang bang and we see the result, not convincing at all. If you got three nails in your head well blood will flow. Here we see the nails, never in close up and a drip of blood. The reason that my collection has this flick is the fact that I found it on Blu Ray for 5 euro's. And now for the best part, Eve Mauro. If you want to see bouncy balls, well you will have two minutes of slo-mo and close ups. And if you can't get enough of her juggs go watch Wicked Lake.
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Confused and confusing story of a deranged Val Kilmer setting up an experiment that global warming will lead to madness by locking six people in a steam room. Armand Assante is the cop trying to get to the bottom if it all. Middle of the road movie with a good cast, even if Kilmer's performance is a bit too "twitchy". Its nice to see a bunch of actors trying to sell the odd material they've been handed. The problem is that the film thinks the confused plot and trippy visuals will make up for the central story that seems to be lacking in real explanation. I'm more disappointed than anything else, especially with the ending that seems to come out of a Dr Mabuse movie. Chaos is right. Worth a look for the actors if you're so inclined.
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gilgongo198025 February 2020The story was just stupid and I almost fell asleep with boredom. A typical B-movie.
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mattbaxter7218 July 2011Most bad movies at least have something going for them, something that makes you want to sit through them, even though you know they're rubbish. It's a rare film that is so thoroughly messed up in every department that it's literally unwatchable. That, plus the frankly bizarre premise, gives this thing some novelty value, if nothing else.
The premise is probably the best thing about it. Think Saw crossed with An Inconvenient Truth, with gratuitous nudity and gratuitous sweaty Eric Roberts. With a plot like that, it could have been a camp classic, but unfortunately everyone took it very seriously, for some reason, almost as though they really thought that this movie would carry a serious message about global warming.
Val Kilmer, above all, is VERY, VERY SERIOUS. He mumbles and stumbles his way through an embarrassing performance, but he's still the best member of a dire cast of non-actors and mugging over-actors. The quality of the camera-work suggests that someone just learned how to use the special features on Windows Movie Maker, and the dialogue seems to have been written by someone who has never heard English spoken before.
It's a challenge to sit through this deeply silly, but deeply self-serious movie. Really, you've got much better things to do with your time. -
thyholymajesty25 January 2011The above review is so stupid that I feel compelled to write one, through a basic sense of justice. This is not a great film. It's not a good film, in the sense that you'd never own it. But it's worth a watch - I was interested from the opening to the end - boring patches, yes, but never boring in the way that kills the movie. They were short as patches go, the flick recovered.
In short, if there's something you like doing, do it. But there's often nothing - and this flick is worth your time then :)
And Val - Val is awesome. Val is good movie in this OK movie. He should lose some weight - the parts would come. -
erikaamato-200-37026227 March 2012I am very tolerant of bad movies - particularly when I'm home sick, watching them for free on Hulu - but this thing is so irredeemably awful, I stopped watching halfway through. Val Kilmer, Armand Assante, and Eric Roberts do their best (although their performances are all oddly mannered in this film), but the material is just not act-able. The rest of the cast is sub-par at best, and they are all constantly either over-acting like mad or staring numbly into the distance. But the absolute worst performance is that of the actress playing Jesse. Wow. Do yourself a huge favor, and don't watch this thing, even for free. Your time is more valuable than this dreck.
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cs3520 August 2009The ending is neither confusing or Dr Mabusian - just one that has been used before. I saw it coming when the Psych staff arrived. Notice that at least three of the people at the mental hospital - the woman who comes to get him, the doctor and his wife - are the same people who were supposedly in the steam room. That makes the ending quite clear. Val is having another hallucination. He has used people that he knows from the mental hospital as characters in his Chaos scenario. The 'human chaos' that the doctor refers to is that residing in Kilmer himself. A very stylish film with an excellent cast. Only real problem is that the violence was gratuitous. They could have implied rather than show the more gruesome things.
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arcturus929 November 2010This was a truly wretched excuse for a film, which can be watched only with the assistance of a video game or something to keep your mind off of it. You've heard the premise that Bozo has six people locked in a steam room as hostages. However, it becomes clear that there's no actual connection. You'll never find out IF it happened, let alone why.
The reactions of the hostages are idiotic even by survival scenario standards. After seeming years of morons emo-ing themselves and one another, one guy gets the notion to rip out the steam pipe. We chuckle as we await the rapid parboiling of the crew in steam from the ruptured pipe, but alas, it doesn't happen. But as soon as he thinks to use the heavy pipe to try to break out, the other hostages kill him for it. Eventually they get the notion to use the pipe to crack the window, great, but only so that they can drop it out of the room. It only gets worse from there. A five year old child would do better at an escape. It would make a good theater of the absurd except it's just too slow and stupid and there's no very good metaphorical point to be made, except that Americans are too darn dumb to worry about global warming, because they won't live that long except if they're lucky enough to be sold into slavery to wealthy PRC businessmen.
The one and only redeeming feature of the film is that some of the actors and bare-breasted actresses are fairly pretty; though the director tried his best to make them look drab, greasy, with truly terrible personalities and generally undesirable. Those of us who delighted in Willow and at least admired in Fake Identity won't be dreaming about the Kilmer from this film. -
nathan-yeo16 September 2009A guy goes into a newspaper to report he has 6 people he locked away in a steam room which will get above 130degrees an kill them. Its some weird type of experiment cooked-up. The newspaper instead of being interested in the story of the 6-people himself slides it off to his old detective buddy. From their Armnade Assante and Erick Roberts go back in fourth. Poorly written yes, there's no witty dialog the characters are pretty carbon-copy. There's a little "SAW" feeling to it. But then again "CRIMINAL MINDS" already did this with a group of "CHEER-LEADERS". You feel this has been done before, and it has been done before but not as a feature movie, a TV show. In the end I liked it.
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brchthethird14 November 2014This is an ineptly made "film" with a nonsensical plot and thinly sketched characters. Val Kilmer plays a deranged scientist who seems to think that the effects of global warming are imminent, and so locks six people in a steam room to prove his point while he also uses them as a bargaining chip to get his "story" published. If that all sounds wacko, it's because it is. Nothing about this makes sense. Val Kilmer is basically portraying a stereotypical conspiracy nut job, but he doesn't even do it that well. And that filmmakers decided to drag global warming into this is even more stupid because it denigrates a serious scientific effort by putting it in the same category with people who believe(d) the world would end in 2012 (and schizophrenic madmen). Aside from him, none of the characters are really given any back story, or any reason to care about them. Armand Assante (as an off-duty cop) does a serviceable job with the material given him and kind of acts as the surrogate for the audience, in a way. He calls out Val Kilmer's character for what he is, and says what everybody in the audience must be thinking about him. Still, it looked like he was sleepwalking through the entire thing. Eric Roberts was the only other actor in this piece of trash that I recognized, but he's given even less to do as one of the six people trapped in a steam room (or are they?). Here is where the writing really lacked. There was no character development to give the audience any reason to care about them, aside from a couple sentences from each stating who they were, where they were from and what they liked/disliked. That's it. After that, it was just them hanging around and slowly going crazy after they find out they can't get out. I just have to say that the film-making here was rather shoddy. The editing was really weird, especially in the steam room scenes. You would have one character speaking, but then it would fade to another while that character was still talking, and replay bits of dialogue. Also, the steam room scenes occur in between scenes of Val Kilmer and Armand Assante and are shown in such a way that it appears that Val Kilmer is either telepathic/omnipotent or he's describing something that already happened, which would directly contradict what he said in the beginning of the movie. Considering that his character is crazy, I guess I could just let it slide but honestly, it's just poor writing, through and through. Val Kilmer's character is basically a Jigsaw wannabe, but only in his head. Even with the mental state of the lead character in question, the appearance of two people (coincidentally, the last two survivors from the steam room) still makes no sense in the context of the story and raises more questions than it answers. Overall, this is a frustratingly bad movie with poor filmic qualities, horrible acting and a story that's too thin and makes no sense. I look forward to never seeing this again.
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TdSmth511 August 2012Val Kilmer plays Jimmy who one day walks into a newspaper office and demands that the editor publish the most important story ever. The editor calls the police instead. Now we find out what this story is. Jimmy is convinced that the world will end in 2012 because of global warming. To prove what will happen to humanity in that event he has created an experiment that seeks to replicate the effects. He has lured 6 people via a dating service into a steam room and will leave them there to die, unless his story is published.
We meet the 6 people that include Eric Roberts, a guy from Brooklyn, a male nurse, a neurotic girl, a waitress and some other girl. At first they get to know each other thinking indeed that this is some date. But they realize that the door is locked and they can't get out while it gets hotter and hotter in the room.
Meanwhile, the cop is convinced that Jimmy is crazy, but he's also convinced that the story of the 6 people locked in the room is true. He goes searching for the room and finally interrogates Jimmy who isn't very cooperative until the cop is taken off the case.
The people in the meantime are going crazy and start killing each other and themselves. We find out that Jimmy actually was a renowned scientist who lost his mind. At the end there is a twist.
The Chaos/Steam Experiment is low budget but looks good and has a tremendous cast (Kilmer, Roberts, Assante, the lovely Mauro). What is missing is more story. Clearly they didn't have enough of it for a 90 minute movie. So we get a lot of repeating scenes and scenes in slow motion. The genre of people confined in a room is also done better elsewhere. Here fortunately, the bickering and yelling is fairly short and death comes quickly. You want to like this movie because of the performances and cast but the meager script, direction and production don't make it easy. The twist at the end is neat but comes late, once you've pretty much given up on things. -
nogodnomasters23 April 2018This movie did so well as "The Chaos Experiment" they renamed it "The Steam Experiment" and re-released it. After the original came out, the state of California reacted to the film and made it illegal for Eric Roberts and Val Kilmer to be in a movie together for the greater good of humanity.
Val Kilmer shows up at a Grand Rapids newspaper and wants his manifesto published on how global warming is going to destroy the world in 2012. He claims he has 6 people held hostage in a steam bath and they are going to die. The police are called in and the movie swaps back and forth between the steam room and the police interrogation, neither of which has enough drama, acting, or clever script to hold my attention. Once Eve Mauro put her top back on, the movie was over for me. Oh yeah, there is a twist at the end which only makes the movie worse, if that is possible.
Doesn't work as a horror, drama, action, or thriller.
F-bomb, nudity, a mouthy Italian, and a cop with a pinkie ring. -
stretchfoofight22 September 2018Officially the worst film I have ever scene. Just plain No should suffice. If you feel like people are exaggerating, watch the film, but be warned it's sooooo awful.
Examples. The six million dollar budget obviously went to Val Kilmer, because 60 percent of the film is the same shot played over and over. They must have been constrained for time, because even when they made a mistake, they kept filming and left it in. Half of what Kilmer says is inaudible.
You could turn this into a drinking game, pick a scene. The hotel, the Ferris wheel, the skyline etc, when it comes up drink. Be warned, you will be wrecked if you do this.
Horrifyingly bad. Q