[The Devil's Tomb]
Plot:An elite group of soldiers on a covert mission to retrieve a scientist from an underground lab encounter an ancient evil in the facility.

Cast:Bill Moseley, Cuba Gooding Jr., Taryn Manning, Jason London, Franky G., Zack Ward, Stephanie Jacobson, Brandon Fobbs.

My Thoughts:Pretty valid horror.

Review:"The Devil's Tomb" is the freshman genre effort from actor turned director Jason Connery. Connery's most noted acting gigs being a small role in "Shanghai Noon", the Jackie Chan flick where he meets his end via an impaling through the throat witha clam shell. And then who could forget "Wishmaster 3"? Where he played the djinn. Part three ironically enough which was far better than that shitty part four. But I digress. "The Devil's Tomb" is another in a line I like to refer to as "milihorror".

Where military types are sent on a mission to extract, recover, or retrieve, and then of course run afoul of something wicked and bad. Something that wasn't even on their threat sheets during their entry into the area. This film has a group of military men and women who are sent to retrieve a scientist (Ron Perlman) from an underground lab. The group is led by Cuba Gooding Jr. Mack, who is joined by other familiar genre faces such as Franky G. as Hammer, Jason London as Hicks, Taryn Manning as Doc, and Zack Ward as Nickels.

Now the number one rule in horror is when sent to an underground facility, something is always bound to go wrong. Check "Resident Evil" and it's sequels for further proof of this. Only "The Devil's Tomb" gets a lot more creative than just zombies, experiments gone wrong, or killer dogs. The film creates a spiritual enemy for these troops to deal with. One that poses a threat by it's ability to change forms, as well as it's cult-leader-esque rhetoric, which it uses to get it's way.

Bill Moseley plays the figurehead of this enemy, and makes a pretty shocking and fucked up appearance early on in the film once the troops arrive at the lab. But make no mistake about it, this is indeed a performance driven horror film. And Cuba Gooding Jr. does a good job driving the film in the lead role. Jr., who many would be surprised to see in a role like this, after ''American Gangster", proves he's a true actor who's not just in it for the money or the stature.

Most established actors wouldn't take on a straight to dvd project, especially actors of Jr's., caliber. But he did, and he really makes the film worth watching. The picture weaves it's web of chilling scenes and creepy imagery by giving us really grotesuqe-looking bad guys, and a lot of claustrophobic moments, considering the movie is set underground. But where it falters is when it gets too wrapped up in the usual cliches of a film like this, and a horror movie in general.

Voices calling out to people, people being suckered in by who they think is a dead lover, child, or relative. Only to later find out it's not, and end up dead, or becoming one of the bad guys through transformation...all of that is here. Indeed some of the films more annoying moments come when the character of Yoshi is suckered in by the ole' "it's your daughter" trick not once, but twice. The second time coming after the initial encounter when her daughter even reveals herself to be not human.

I mean if you've seen your daughter is a sickly-looking demon/zombie, and then you fall for her calling to you a second time after that, are you even bright enough to be warranted to carry a firearm? I think not. This awful plot point is then followed up near the end of the movie when a revelation is announced about Yoshi's daughter. Thus making her stupidity even more annoying.

But beyond that character, the other characters in the film are all tolerable, and on the side of the troops, most of them in the end are likeable guys and gals, and you're sort of sorry to see them get taken out. There's not much blood and gore in this film from a death standpoint. More blood gets vomited-out and spit-out in this movie, than gets shed in an attack i.e. stabbing, shooting, anything of that sort.

And as far as gruesome deaths are concerned, other than a guy getting his arm broken in half, there's not much of that either. But the movie does fine on it's own without gruesome deaths, and other assorted nastiness. And while the constant bible-speak and hellfire and brimstone lingo can get annoying at times, and the revelation of the force behind the possessions seems somewhat silly when it eventually comes...the film finishes up strongly, and overall manages to be a few notches better than the average jarheads meet big bad evil horror flick. "The Devil's Tomb" is for the most part, worth seeing atleast once.

Positives:Strong performances by most of the cast, interesting supernatural bad guys, a pretty well-written story.

Negatives:The Yoshi character wasn't written very smartly at all, the revelation of the force behind the possessions seemed a bit cheesy.

Overall:Three out of four stars.





( Talk about it in the Forums!)



( Back to the main page)