In short: Armed Response (2017)

The inventor (Dave Annable) of secret, weird AI mind-reading buildings doing illegal interrogations for the government called the Temple(s) is called in by his old CIA cronies (among them Wesley Snipes and Anne Heche, who are actually in the whole film and not just doing cameo biz) to help them check out what happened to the crew manning a Temple situated on US soil after all contact with them has broken off without warning. They find everyone inside the building dead. The problem won’t turn out to be something as pedestrian as terrorists attacking the building, though. There’s something more bizarre and much more sinister going on inside it, and soon, the protagonists will find themselves locked in and under a very different kind of attack.

Despite title and marketing that make it look like an action film, John Stockwell’s Armed Response is in truth a psychological horror movie about a small group of people who a supernatural force confronts with and punishes for past guilt, taking place in that most horrific place of all contemporary horror films: a series of empty corridors and boring half-industrial rooms with little sign of anything as advanced as production design. Consequently, the film has its trouble building up the proper mood of dread and doom, or believably portraying the supernatural terror the characters find themselves attacked by. The special effects are also pretty dreadful (sub-SyFy Original, I dare say), with Stockwell not showing much talent for or interest in obfuscating their crappiness.

In general Stockwell’s direction is not terribly exciting. The film may not be technically incompetent, but there are few attempts visible at smoothing over the troubles its obvious low budget and lack of visual assets cause it. That’s a bit of a shame, for there’s a core of a really interesting horror film about people building a judgemental machine and then finding themselves judged by it – the possible religious connotations don’t go further than the name of the place either – as well as one about guilt for terrible acts someone has committed and how different people deal with this guilt (or do not deal). There are certainly scenes when the film approaches the more interesting aspects of these ideas – particularly the finale has its moments there – but for every one of these, there are three of boring walking through dark corridors. Still, that’s certainly more than quite a few direct to home video/streaming films can boast of, so Armed Response isn’t a total failure.


Its problem is more how easy it is to see that better direction and a smidgen more money could have turned this into a hidden gem instead of a film that’s not as bad as it could be.