Now available on DVD
Cast:
Cuba Gooding Jr. as Mack
Ray Winstone as Blakely
Ron Perlman as Wesley
Taryn Manning as Doc
Henry Rollins as Fulton
Valerie Cruz as Elissa
Franky G as Hammer
Bill Moseley as Prof. Duncan
Directed by Jason Connery
Review:
This movie is laid out almost like the plot of a video game…oh, wait, it’s almost exactly like the recent Clive Barker game “Jericho”, minus the soldiers with psychic superpowers. Believe it or not, this was directed by none other than Sean Connery’s son, Jason, who recently appeared in The Asylum’s Dragonquest, adding a useless credit to his unimpressive, low-budget b-grade acting career. So I was very surprised to see that he was actually behind the camera on this seemingly big budget horror thriller with an impressive cast. Okay, so maybe Cuba Gooding Jr., Ron Perlman, Ray Winstone, and Henry Rollins don’t impress you, but it’s a massive step up for Connery and for the world of b-grade direct-to-dvd. Usually, all those guys would appear alone, amid a sea of new, unknown faces. Here, James Bond Jr. has brought them all together to unearth the devil himself. Did I mention they also have Taryn Manning, Bill Mosely, Zack Ward, and Jason London? Well, they do.
Famous script coach Robert Mckee is famous for famously trashing the use of voice-overs. He calls them pointless because films are visual and we should see instead of having it (“it” meaning usually something obvious) explained to us. I disagree with him on this because great films like The Man Who Wasn’t There and the The Virgin Suicides employ the voice-over wonderfully, elevating those films into hypnotic poetry. This film begins with a small bit of unnecessary and cheese-tastic voice over by Cuba, who plays Mack the leader of an elite squad of commandos. This did not bode well for the film, so I settled in to have my patience tested.
Mack and his team, who are of course comprised of people with names like Hicks, Click, Hammer, and Nickels (Manning plays the medic and she wants people to call her “Doc”), have been chosen to lead Dr. Elissa Cardell into an archeological dig that has been appropriated by the army when they found something in there that is currently top secret. All communication has been lost with the underground base in the desert of Somalia or wherever and their mission is simply to go in and find Dr. Wesley (Perlman), who’s been maintaining the base with 19 other scientists and security personnel. When they get there, they meet a dying priest with pustules all over his face and body and Moseley in a some freaky makeup, so they quickly realize that whatever happened in this base is more complex than they first imagined.
All during the film, Mack flashes back to a previous fire fight, which seems to have no bearing on the story and takes away from whatever intensity they are trying to set up. He gets this faraway look right in the middle of a scene and it flashes back to a room where we meet the previous leader of their team, Blakely (played by the busy Winstone), and we find out how Mack got command of the unit. This comes out of nowhere and the eventual reasoning behind the entire sequence, which would have lasted around 3 minutes if played altogether, is some bit of incomprehensible character fluff for Mack, but it doesn’t really make any sense and is the biggest sore spot (or spots) of the film.
The team inevitably splits up. One portion heads to the power station to turn the power back on and the rest go to find Doc and Moseley’s monstrous survivor, who have both gone missing. Moseley leads them to the safe room they were seeking in the first place and when he doesn’t die from the massive head and torso wounds they inflict on him, Mack decides to get his team out of this sticky situation before it gets any worse. Suddenly, the safe room door opens and Father Fulton (a frightened and vulnerable and terrible Rollins, who was better in Wrong Turn 2) steps out. Somehow he knows where Doc is.
They are led down to a temple of sorts where the big discovery, the film’s raison d’etre, is finally revealed. I’ve wrestled with revealing it to you here for minutes, at least, and decided to spill the beans because they rest of the film wouldn’t be as interesting without full disclosure. They discover an alien (!!!) frozen in a block of ice. It turns out that this is actually a fallen angel, a Nephilim, who is at war with God. Oh and by the way, Dr. Cardell has activated the bases self-destruct and they have to get their asses out of there in twenty minutes. The problem is that the soul of the Nephilim alien thing has inhabited the body of Dr. Wesley, who doesn’t plan on letting them leave alive.
The movie feels like a John Carpenter joint without the panache. Think Prince of Darkness without the homeless people and philosophical rhetoric. It had the potential to be awesome and exciting, but the film never really works itself into a lather. That being said, the film is gleefully gory and packs in a ton of cringe-worthy effects and kills, which makes it worth the price of admission alone. Everything from spinal-cord flaying to boil-sucking are on display here. Though bogged down with a stilted pace that never really ramps up into classic Carpenter mayhem, the film never bores you. Connery does a great job of pointing the camera in the right direction and making every shot look pretty damn nice, causing the film to rise above its direct-to-dvd stigma. With a bit more action and a grader finale, this film could have actually played theatrically.
Sure, it’s cheesy and awkwardly paced, but it’s miles away from the typical stuff on dvd nowadays. It’s a lot better than you’d imagine it would be (or at least I imagined it would be) and that makes it worthwhile viewing. It may not be earth-shattering, but it sure isn’t bargain-bin material either. If they had gone balls-to-wall in the third act, it would have gotten a higher score. The disc comes with a commentary from Connery and Gooding, a short blooper reel, 6 alternate scenes, and a behind-the-scenes doc.
