‘Time,’ ‘Nest’: More Cheese Than Chills

Science fiction usually sells well at movie theaters in the summer, but that doesn’t guarantee success for a pair of movies headed to the small screen in the next few days.

Just a week after its high-minded “Nuremberg,” TNT is trotting out the futuristic action flick “Race Against Time,” a “Blade Runner”-meets-”Logan’s Run” tale of a guy trying to elude a death squad. It airs Sunday, while Tuesday brings USA’s “Arachnophobia”-meets-”Alien” killer-bug movie, “They Nest,” carrying the tag line, “You are what they eat.”

Both strive for playful dark comedy, and, in some respects, they deliver it. “Race Against Time” is set just a decade or so in the future, when a giant health-care corporation legally harvests vital organs and fluids by paying people $300,000 for the right to collect their bodies a year later. Talk about HMO hell. . . . In “They Nest,” the humor comes from bug’s-eye views of creepy-crawlies closing in for the kill, or of newly evolved, even-more-dangerous strains of the bugs headed right at the camera for a bite of you.

Unfortunately, the cheese factor overwhelms the chill factor in both films, although “They Nest” at least has wonderfully icky special effects.

In “Race Against Time,” Eric Roberts headlines as a cash-strapped construction worker who sells his body to the sinister Lifecorps to pay for life-or-death medical intervention for his 7-year-old son. Realizing he’s been cheated, he angrily returns to Lifecorps, which in turn prompts the corporation to call in his marker ahead of schedule. He flees with the help of a bounty hunter turned ally (Sarah Wynter), with Lifecorps’ grim reaper (Cary Elwes) in hot pursuit.

Although Cary Solomon and Chuck Konzelman’s script is thoroughly predictable, the pacing rarely flags, under Geoff Murphy’s direction. The low-budget special effects meant to evoke a bleak, “Blade Runner”-like vision of the future, however, look to have been generated on someone’s homeiMac. Ultimately, we just end up feeling sad that so many fun-to-watch actors--Roberts and Elwes, as well as Chris Sarandon and Diane Venora as chilly Lifecorps execs--have been reduced to this.

In “They Nest,” Thomas Calabro, the manipulative doctor on “Melrose Place,” once again plays a physician. This time, he’s a Boston doc who, after falling apart in the emergency room, retreats to a recently purchased vacation home on an island off of Maine. His timing couldn’t be worse, for his arrival coincides with that of scary-looking cockroach-like creatures that have taken to using warm-blooded animals--including humans--as hosts for their eggs.

The bugs are easily killed when stepped on; the result is a gooey mess (think: smashed Milky Way bar) that provides a couple of the movie’s funnier moments. When the bugs attack as a group, though, heaven help you. Some townspeople--who include the pretty shopkeeper (Kristen Dalton) who’s sweet on the doctor, the well-meaning if ineffectual sheriff (Dean Stockwell) and the angry, soused brothers (John Savage, Tom McBeath) who lost possession of the house the doc purchased--will escape; some won’t.

John Claflin and Daniel Zelman’s script delivers several more chuckles, including the doctor’s fateful run-in with an elementary school class’ pet tarantula, and director Ellory Elkayem keeps the pace skittering along.

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“Race Against Time” debuts Sunday at 8 and 10 p.m. and midnight on TNT. The network has rated it TV-14-LV (may be unsuitable for children younger than 14, with advisories for language and violence). “They Nest” debuts Tuesday at 8 and 11:30 p.m. on USA. The network has rated it TV-14 (may be unsuitable for children younger than 14).