As long as there have been popular movies there have been knock-off films, movies that make fast, cheap cash-in's on whatever the popular thing is at the time. Over the last few decades, especially with the advent of digital technology, this business has exploded as filmmakers no longer need big budgets or practical effects wizardry to put their vision on screen. One company that has dominated this mockbuster market is The Asylum, an American independent studio who has been making movies since the late 90's, and has been responsible for some of the more prolific mockbusters like Snakes on a Train, Transmorphers, and Paranormal Entity, as well as giant animal movies such as Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus, and the Sharknado series. Somehow The Asylum has made dozens of films, and a lot of people will be aware of at least one of their films even if they've never watched them.
One of the main players at The Asylum says in Mockbuster that 'We make shitty movies for people with bad taste... and alcoholics.' It's perhaps a little unsurprising that a company with this kind of philosophy would be willing to try just about anything on one of their films; and that's what leads us to the documentary film Mockbuster which follows Australian filmmaker Anthony Frith, who's found himself stuck in a fairly boring life of making corporate training videos. However, when Anthony, who's something of a fan of The Asylum movies (hopefully not because he's an alcoholic) emails The Asylum and asks if he can direct one of their films. And of course, they say yes.
What follows is perhaps one of the wildest filmmaking journeys documented onto film as Anthony travels to Los Angeles to meet the studio heads, sign a contract, and get assigned a film... that he has six days to shoot. It turns out The Asylum make movies in the same way that an episode of South Park is made; and if you thought it wild that a 20 minute episode of animation can be knocked out in just a week wait until you see the absolute chaos of an Asylum shoot.
Over the course of Mockbuster we watch as Anthony returns to Australia and attempts to assemble a cast and crew, despite not having a script for the film, and then battles against studio oversight, filming difficulties, and a gruelling time constraint to somehow create something that can be assembled into some degree of a coherent 90 minute movie.
Perhaps the most eye-opening thing about Mockbuster is that it completely changes the way that you'll look at these cheap knock-offs. Yes, they're still terrible quality filled with rambling incoherent scripts, bad acting, and terrible effects, but having now seen how they're made they kind of become miracle projects. No one is going to say they're any kind of high-brow art, or even middle-brow (The Asylum studio heads make it clear they dislike and discourage 'arthouse complexity'), but the fact that even something as mildly entertaining as The Asylum pictures can be made under such gruelling, impossible constraints is something of a testament to the people creating them. And I can't help but wonder just how much more the quality could increase if these creatives were given more time.
This is something that Mockbuster does touch upon when Anthony meets with former Asylum director Rachel Lee Goldenberg, who began her career making Sunday School Musical for The Asylum, but has gone on to win an Emmy, has worked with Hollywood stars such as Will Ferrell, and even worked as a White House liaison. Her example, and words of encouragement to Anthony seem to do little to lift his spirits as he fights to make his film, a loose adaptation of the public domain The Land That Time Forgot, as we see the stress mount over the course of the film. Whilst Anthony is able to salvage some degree of enjoyment out of the experience, on his last say according to his narration, it's clear that his initial statement of 'even a bad movie is better than no movie' may have wavered at times.
Despite the masses of stress and difficulties, including having to fly to the US for a day of reshoots to add entirely new story and characters into the film, Anthony makes his film and comes out the experience happy. The film ends with a screening at his local cinema, packed to the gills with friends and family who come to celebrate his bad film. Mockbuster shows the incredible lows of Anthony's experience, as well as his giddy highs, and it makes for an entertaining movie; more so than the film he actually made for The Asylum.
Mockbuster is both encouraging people to pursue their dreams, to swing big and take those risks needed to do the things that they've always wanted, yet also acts as something of a warning that doing so won't be easy by any means. It offers an insight into the movies that you scroll past on streaming services or fail to pick up off the supermarket shelf because the terrible title and bad poster art screams 'terrible movie' and how they're made in a way that will probably change how you see them; even if it doesn't encourage you to actually watch them.
Mockbuster is available now on digital services.
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