Main cast: Nick Chinlund (Tagger), Kevin Grevioux (Reid), Justin Arnold (Griffin), John Vargas (Dominguez), Adrian Paul (Gunnar), Matt Musgrove (Sullivan), Mingyu Chu (Chen), Masika Kalysha (Lake), Ny’Acies Divine (Paine), Fito De la Parra (Canned Heat), and Danny Trejo (Vega)
Directors: The Hensman Brothers
Sure, that’s Danny Trejo on the poster of The Prey: Legend of Karnoctus. There’s always an asterisk next to his name whenever he’s in a movie, though.
You see, whenever Mr Trejo is in a movie, it will either suck very hard or is pretty good, but one thing is for sure: he’d be bad-ass regardless of the movie. Whether he is in a movie long enough to do this thing, however, well, that is the big question here. Considering that this is a crowdfunded movie—and no, I didn’t chip in—his role here is essentially a cameo, so that’s not exactly great news. It’s the same with Adrian Paul, as he isn’t in here for long.
Nick Chinlund is, though. He probably owes the directors, with one of them also a co-screenwriter, some big favors that they have come to collect.
Set in Afghanistan, this movie has a bunch of disenchanted US soldiers, led by Mr Chinlund’s Tagger and his second-in-command Reid, deciding to steal some gold from the Taliban for themselves. Unfortunately, their pick-up point for the gold is a cave in which lives a monster that gives the movie its title, and that thing is mighty hungry…
Only, this one goes as well as one would expect a typical crowdfunded movie to go. The kindest thing I can say about this one is that it tries.
Oh, and the dialogues are snappy and fun, I suppose. That doesn’t seem much, but I would take anything I can get from this movie as it sure isn’t giving me much.
While I do empathize with the low budget these folks have to work with, the script is a mess. Instead of focusing on the gold, the movie instead takes weird and unnecessary detours such as hallucinations and annoying arguments and fights between the goons here. As a result, much of the movie isn’t very fun to watch, as it’s just scenes after scenes of people being annoying and dumb.
When the monster does appear, well, I appreciate the use of practical effects, but there’s only so much that can be done with a guy in a costume and little budget to hide that fact.
The movie takes other short cuts to make the most of its limited budget, such as post-production comic art-style blood splatter and voice-overs to replace the need for actual filming of a scene, but I’m fine with all these things. I just wish the story had been more focused on the gold heist and the monster and less on the other stuff that only bogs down the movie.
