Another superhero movie made well with a small budget. The story is pretty average at this point in the genre where the "Powers" are suppressed by the government (or another X-Men movie) but its the execution from Chan and the acting prowess of Amell brothers that impress here. The action scenes are choreographed well and while you pretty much know what's going to happen next, the movie breezes past its 100 minutes runtime. Chan uses the presumably smaller budget (I read it was crowd-funded after the 2016 short film of the same name) very well. I wasn't impressed with the ending as Garrett's (Stephen Amell) character is not given any closure but overall a satisfying action adventure.

Yeah its well made, especially considering the budget and unlike some of the other stuff I've seen them in that I haven't been all that impressed with the Amell brothers were actually pretty solid in this. I don't know why, but as much as I did like the concept and a lot of the elements on display here this movie just kind of lost my attention half way through. Maybe I need to re-watch it sometime, but the second half of this movie just wasn't as interesting or engaging to me as the beginning was with the setup and the world building. Also, that ending was really unsatisfying IMO.

C+

Pretty weak in my opinion, it starts of interestingly enough but I don't think it can hold a candle to something like Chronicle, which much more mastered the low-budget superhero film. The concept in this is surely OK, but the totality of the script is very tame and I was just so wholly unimpressed with most of the acting, the lead (Robbie Amell) and his mother (Kari Matchett) never convinced me and it was not just them either. Stephen Amell and Sun Kang though were totally fine in it, but overall the film was a lowly endeavor for me.

C-

Code 8 is not a terrible version of the "what if the X-Men were real and gritty?" type of story. It just never does enough to stand on its own. Good performances from the Amell brothers though.

C+