Main cast: Charlotte Kirk (Captain Kate Sinclair), Jonathan Howard (Sergeant Tom Hook), Leon Ockenden (Sergeant Oswald Jones), Hadi Khanjanpour (Kabir Abdul Rahimi), Troy Alexander (Trooper Dave Bromhead), Mark Strepan (Corporal Kip Wilks), Kibong Tanji (Corporal Jade Lafayette), and Jamie Bamber (Major Roy Finch)
Director: Neil Marshall
It all started in 2017, when the US armed forces dropped this MOAB bomb in some remote location in Afghanistan. That’s MOAB as in ‘massive ordnance air blast”… or is it “mother of all bombs”? I’m sure some military folks out there that happen to read this can correct me on this, heh.
Naturally, weird things start to occur in the area, and Captain Kirk Sinclair will learn firsthand the nature of these things when her plane is shot down by the Afghan troops and she has to make an emergency drop right into that area.
Shot at and hounded by the soldiers that have shot down her plane, she has to seek shelter in an underground bunker… only to learn that the bunker is more of The Lair of creatures that had been drastically changed by the MOAB. Boy, this particular welcoming committee makes the Afghan one look so warm and friendly!
Neil Marshall will always have a place in my heart for Dog Soldiers, but in the 20 years since, his career hasn’t exactly been stellar. After the abomination that is Hellboy, he’s been collaborating with his fiancée Charlotte Kirk on horror films on a noticeably small budget in what seems like him making a full circle. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially if this kind of movies is his niche.
A part of me dies inside, however, when I look at the hilariously obvious green screen in the opening scene of Sinclair supposedly flying her plane. Charlotte Kirk’s “reaction” when her plane is shot down and hurtling toward the ground is more akin to a surly kid clamming up and refusing to leave the kiddie plane machine at a mall when the time is up.
Well, on the bright side, this one has a quaint, charming B-grade feel to the whole thing… wait, that’s because this is a B-grade flick. It wastes little time getting to the good stuff, and there is some lovely gore and carnage to enjoy.
However, the characters are all basically meat with little personality, aside from maybe the Afghan prisoner, and most of them feel interchangeable, especially when it’s dark and it’s hard to make out or care about who is doing what. Well, Jamie Bamber’s character has an eye patch, so that gives him a quarter of a personality, maybe?
Charlotte Kirk looks the part, but she isn’t very convincing as a hardened military person. Her bearing, tone, and movement all feel tad off, somehow. I can’t help thinking that perhaps someone like Milla Jovovich would be better in this role. I know, these people would never be able to afford her, but surely Ms Kirk could do a better job here, at least!
The monster looks good at close-up, so that’s nice, but when filmed from a distance, it’s rather obvious that it’s just someone in a rubber suit, oops. Still, I can’t complain about that, as this movie is clearly limited by its budget.
All in all, this is an okay film that tries to pay homage to Aliens and other similar “humans versus alien monsters” flicks out there, but at the same time, it feels tad mechanical and uninspired. Worse, it’s easy to be motivated by certain aspects of this movie to compare it to Mr Marshall’s past efforts—ooh, soldiers trapped in a single location and hounded by monsters… that’s Dog Soldiers; trapped underground… hey, The Descent, which I just realized I never got around to review, oops—and find this one rather wanting as a result.
I try not to be convinced that the best days of Mr Marshall are behind him, but watchable but lackluster efforts like this isn’t helping his case.
