Main cast: Ryan Merriman (Shane), Jamie Costa (Peterson), Sarah J Bartholomew (Piper), Cait Brasel (Madison), Duncan Barrett Brown (Curtis), Justin France (Shapiro), Emily Hileman (Green), and Brooks Ryan (Armstrong)
Director: Ryan “Staples” Scott

I can only guess that the people behind Robot Riot must have thought it’d be cool to make a movie version of the game PlayerUnknown’s Battleground, only with CGI robots thrown in, because that was what that was hot with the kids at that time. Do people still play that buggy, incomplete mess? I thought kids are all about Fortnite, although in my family, the Fortnite player now scoffs at that game and claims that he has “retired” from that game—because the game was for kids, you see, and he’s a grown-up now that plays Valorant. He is 10, by the way.

Back to this movie, it is unfortunate that the low budget and dodgy acting combined makes this one more of a knock-off version that populates the mobile download shop than the real deal.

Oh, and hello there Ryan Merriman. I don’t know why I keep stumbling upon low-budget flicks that have him headlining the cast, but I do feel for this fellow. He used to have a middling career and even headlined one of those Final Destination movies, but the years since then hadn’t been kind to his looks and career. Who knows, maybe he’s one of those wealthy people that only worked for fun, and acted in this one because he’s a big fan of Fortnite or something? That or he really needs a new agent STAT.

This one is about soldiers being parachuted into a location, with no memory of their past and with mysterious metallic tags embedded to the back of their neck. They are then pitted against robots. What is going on here? Who cares, because the acting is really bad. Ryan Merriman is the only one that manages to deliver his lines like a human being, while the others exude reading from a white board held up by an intern off-screen realness.

There is no proper pacing here; I find myself yawning as these people just run around while behaving like they are in front of the camera for the first time and have no clue what to do. The whole thing is just boring, and I find myself frequently checking my phone when I’m supposed to be paying attention to this thing.

As for the robots, the CGI is inconsistent. Sometimes the robots look okay—they certainly put on a more human-like performance than some of the human cast members here—while at other times they look really bad, like they were rejected assets from a mobile phone battle royale game hastily pasted into the scenery. I guess they did the nicer ones first, and then ran out of money and had to cut huge corners for the rest of the scenes.

At any rate, Robot Riot is utterly dull. It is one of those movies that, were this made ten years ago, destined to go straight to DVD and then the landfill. These days, though, it exists instead to fill up a slot in a streaming service. It’s not a bad pick if one wants only to have something, anything, play in the background while one makes out on the sofa or something, I guess. It’s a waste of time otherwise.

Oh, Mr Merriman. Maybe he and fellow “What happened to your career, good man?” actor Cam Gigandet can get together and start a saucy OnlyFans or something. That can’t be any less dignified than leaving a trail of bad movies in their wake!