Runtime: 97 unfortunate minutes
Directed by: Neil Marshall, which is disappointing
Starring: Neil's muse Charlotte Kirk, along with various actors unfamiliar with me.
From: A number of production companies... including one known as Pretty Good Films. Note that this is FAR worse than "a pretty good film."
What the heck happened with Neil Marshall?
To clarify, I haven't experienced Dog Soldiers (yet; the 4K print out there is a marked improvement over the Blu-ray judging by screenshots I've seen so I should pick that up one day) but The Descent is a blast and for how hilarious derivative it was, Doomsday still entertained me. Centurion didn't blow me away, and apparently a lot of people felt that way too as he was stuck in TV hell for years until the Hellboy reboot... as I haven't seen the Ron Perlman Hellboys no way would I check out something that had such a legendarily bad production history Marshall disowned the end product.
I won't blame his muse/girlfriend Charlotte Kirk for the downfall. Kirk is perhaps best known for her role in bringing down TWO Hollywood executives because of Me Too, but I won't be touching that with a 39 foot pole... besides, a lot of what happened there is still confidential so who knows what happened. All the bad reviews kept me away from their first collaboration together (The Reckoning) and it was only a mix of curiosity and possibly taking the bullet for many others that made me stream this on Shudder.
Ooof, was this ever rotten. Immediately, we see Royal Air Force member Kirk crash her plane in Afghanistan due to “insurgents”, she escapes in an old Soviet bunker that hosts “half-human, half-alien hybrids”, she escapes, they later escape, and they all end up at a military base which is not only full of irritating constantly cursing bellends, but also bellends that are literally incompetent as they were moved out of other regiments for egregious mistakes. Can you blame me for not liking any of those clowns? Kirk as a badass comparable to Sarah Connor in T2... not believable in the least. All of this is delivered with dialogue that was lousy at best and gross/crass at worst.
This wasn't scary and if you were expecting the action to deliver, prepare to be discouraged. Heck, this F Troop of morons contained several nationalities and thus a few accents were heard which HAD to be caricatures of those countries rather than that person's native tongue. Really, they were that bad; we never really got to know these characters, although most of them I did not WANT to know much more. It's such a stupid plot where the film would have ended much sooner except for the characters making boneheaded decision after baffling contrivance.
The synth score isn't bad, Marshall made his Carpenter fandom once again apparent and there are some practical effects-which are leagues better than the CG-yet that is no reason to check out a film. To quote someone not on Letterboxd who have seen the Resident Evil movies (I haven't), it's like Marshall was trying for his version of the franchise and couldn't even clear that low hurdle.
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