Full Moon Fever: QUADRANT

 by Patrick Bromley

The latest from Full Moon is a throwback to the old days.

Quadrant, the new Full Moon movie and the first in the studio's recently-launched "Pulp Noir" label (a series of films that will be launched across all platforms -- including Tubi, Blu-ray, and even VHS -- simultaneously), represents an attempt by director Charles Band to get back to the basics of early Full Moon features and even Empire Pictures, the studio Band founded in the mid-'80s that was responsible for classics like From Beyond, Re-Animator, and Dolls. It's a mad scientist tale that takes itself seriously, embracing adult themes, sexuality, and violence in a way that the sillier and jokier movies of the last several years have not. What's more, there's not a tiny creature, puppet, or doll anywhere to be found.

The movie stars Shannon Barnes as Erin, a young woman who has signed up to be a test subject for Quadrant, a Virtual Reality system designed by some rogue scientists (Emma Reingel and Rickard Claeson) as a way of making users confront their deepest fears in cyberspace in order to overcome them. Unfortunately for the inventors of Quadrant, Erin is a little obsessed with Jack the Ripper and uses the technology to recreate his murders -- that is, until stabbing people in virtual space no longer provides the thrills he needs and she starts doing it in real life.

First things first: Quadrant is the 400th (!!) movie from Full Moon. After 400 movies and with the business changing the way it has -- budgets have all but disappeared, especially for small indies like Full Moon -- it's probably more important to look at intent over execution because the finished product is almost never going to live up to expectations, things being what they are. I guess that's a nice way of saying that Quadrant doesn't altogether work, but it's not for lack of trying. Pointing out that the film lacks the money and resources to achieve its ambitions is unnecessary and repetitive and has been true of most of their output since the Paramount deal fell apart in the 1990s. What I'm looking for in a Full Moon movie these days is the feeling that they're trying their best, and that's certainly true of Quadrant. It's clear that everyone wanted to make as good a movie as they could. That doesn't always feel like it's been the case in recent years. I'm looking at you, Evil Bong 888.

It helps that Band brought in C. Courtney Joyner, a veteran of Empire Pictures and Full Moon's best days (having written Prison, Doctor Mordrid, Puppet Master III, Lurking Fear, and Trancers III, which he also directed), to write the screenplay for Quadrant. The story is fairly straightforward and mostly puts four people in a room talking, but the film treats those characters as adults and takes its themes seriously as it deals with technology run amok, with identity, with what makes us afraid and how we deal with those fears. Joyner knows how to write films that shoot on a budget without being defined by their limitations that way some of Full Moon's recent output has felt. While the movie recalls the studio's own Albert Pyun-directed Arcade in a lot of ways, Quadrant is less teen-friendly than the Pyun film both because it's characters are grown ups and because it's more violent and sexual. It's unfortunate that the violence is so neutered and repetitive: characters lie down and are stabbed repeatedly out of frame while spurts of blood spray up onto the stabber. Again, I get that the current Full Moon doesn't have the effects budgets to pull off what it used to, but it's hard not to wish for a little more ambition or creativity in the execution of the executions.

These are basically nitpicks, though. Watching a Full Moon movie in 2024 means accepting it for what it is and not penalizing the film for what I wish it would be. Both the Empire days and the Paramount days are 30-40 years in the past and they're not coming back, but at least Quadrant represents an attempt to return to them -- in spirit, anyway. It's more adult and mature and interested in psychology as much as it is in the exploitable elements like violence and nudity. The Jack the Ripper angle is kind of weird, but I will always welcome weird in my Full Moon movies. Weird is what defines them and separates them from the majors. Weird is what they do best. 

After making its world premiere at Chicago's Flashback Weekend recently, Quadrant will release on all channels -- physical and streaming, paid and free -- on August 23.

Got a title you'd like to see covered in a future installment of Full Moon Fever? Let us know in the comments below!