“I need to rewatch this before the new movie comes out next week,” Jess said in a joking-not-joking fashion. And I put it on 80% jokingly, expecting to turn it off in five minutes.

But what I didn’t reckon with is that the very first moment of the movie, like before any studio logos or anything, is the dude shouting “Mortal Kombat!” and then launching into the theme song, and you simply can’t turn that off.

So here’s what’s good about the movie: 1) they play that theme song literally three times over the course of the movie, 2) they say “finish him,” “fatality,” “flawless victory,” and “get over here,” 3) they spend like a total of ten minutes on the actual plot.

Here’s what’s bad about the movie: 1) Syfy level production values, particularly the monochromatic blue/red/purple lighting, 2) the plot is too thin to really fill up the full ten minutes allotted to it, 3) the characters are all terrible, 4) they only play the theme song three times.

In its favor, the movie takes itself about as seriously as it expects you to take it, which is to say zero percent. Not really recommended unless you’re looking for a very specific variety of cheese, but heavily recommended if you are. I’m actually really curious what the 2021 remake is going to look like.