The Devil's Tomb
So bad. So, so bad. But it had Valerie Cruz, Ron Perlman, and Cuba Gooding, Jr. Plus Taryn Manning, whom I've enjoyed in the few seasons of Sons of Anarchy that I watched, and a bunch of other actors I've seen in various things and enjoyed.
It was a hideously terrible fusion of military religious horror and got none of it quite right. To be fair, I'm not a military expert, so maybe it got some of that part right. But it was so, so terrible and a great backdrop to write to because I really didn't care what was going on at all.
They should have kept it a military alien invasion film and left the religious stuff out of it. They really ought to have. CIA agent Valerie Cruz shows up and tells the military team they're there to get Ron Perlman, her dad, out and leave everyone and everything else behind from an archaeological site in the Middle East. Specifically where? I don't know, because do there happen to be specific places in the Middle East? Lol, no, of course not. That is just an area that has one name.
I don't know, seems iffy to me, why would they send a CIA agent after her own dad? I feel like that would be a conflict of interest. But okay! Then she proceeds not to give them any information they could use to get anything done or, you know, survive.
They proceed to go into some military installation/archaeological dig which is also a tomb, because the script to this thing was obviously changed partway through, and discover a dude covered in boils and sores. Some make-up artist had lots of fun with that, at least, the gore in this film is spot-on.
Plus they had infected-with-evil lesbian Taryn Manning seducing the straight pregnant Asian character played by Stephanie Jacobsen who had come on the mission despite being pregnant (and not having told anyone that she had gotten pregnant via her teammate), and then seducing Stephanie Jacobsen to the side of evil, and then evil lesbian Taryn Manning confessed to having performed surgery on her cancer-having sister and oh my GOD why would they let someone perform surgery on her own sister?
Blah, blah, infection cakes (why would Biblical evil pass infection on through black bile making skin contact with uninfected victims?), virtually everyone gets infected throughout the entire film, and dude with a cross carved on his chest shows up to be suspiciously creepy, but Henry Rollins also shows up to tell everyone that this place is evil and a Nephilim is buried below the sands, and explain to us that Nephilim are evil, fallen angels from Heaven and they're buried in tombs throughout the world and a secret society is here to destroy the Nephilim before its soul is released.
OMFG. Nephilm are not fallen angels, they are the product of angels who banged human women that then gave birth to half-angel, half-human babies, can we get it right? Also, why is this such a Catholic film? I always feel like Nephilim-themed horror should be Jewish, but is it? Like, ever? No, it is not.
Not to mention they tried to pull the "all world religions have the same themes" line (ugh, they do not), and they said that "Hebrew" was a religion, I mean, what the fuck? That's just basic research fail.
But we get to the "Nephilim" and it's actually a grey alien buried in ice, and I see that it's just a rewritten script that they'd gotten really far in filming or something. Oh holy hell, this is so bad. So, so bad.
Long story short (too late), most people get infected (but not everyone), and everyone dies but Cuba Gooding, Jr. Valerie Cruz saves her daddy, Ron Perlman, who has been possessed by the Nephilim (???) by taking the possession into herself, the self-destruct has somehow been activated with just enough time for Cuba Gooding, Jr. to get away and declare himself a warrior for God in what's absolutely room for a sequel that will never be made because this is just so hideous and terrible. This entry has been cross-posted to Dreamwidth (
comments). Comments are welcome on either post.
It was a hideously terrible fusion of military religious horror and got none of it quite right. To be fair, I'm not a military expert, so maybe it got some of that part right. But it was so, so terrible and a great backdrop to write to because I really didn't care what was going on at all.
They should have kept it a military alien invasion film and left the religious stuff out of it. They really ought to have. CIA agent Valerie Cruz shows up and tells the military team they're there to get Ron Perlman, her dad, out and leave everyone and everything else behind from an archaeological site in the Middle East. Specifically where? I don't know, because do there happen to be specific places in the Middle East? Lol, no, of course not. That is just an area that has one name.
I don't know, seems iffy to me, why would they send a CIA agent after her own dad? I feel like that would be a conflict of interest. But okay! Then she proceeds not to give them any information they could use to get anything done or, you know, survive.
They proceed to go into some military installation/archaeological dig which is also a tomb, because the script to this thing was obviously changed partway through, and discover a dude covered in boils and sores. Some make-up artist had lots of fun with that, at least, the gore in this film is spot-on.
Plus they had infected-with-evil lesbian Taryn Manning seducing the straight pregnant Asian character played by Stephanie Jacobsen who had come on the mission despite being pregnant (and not having told anyone that she had gotten pregnant via her teammate), and then seducing Stephanie Jacobsen to the side of evil, and then evil lesbian Taryn Manning confessed to having performed surgery on her cancer-having sister and oh my GOD why would they let someone perform surgery on her own sister?
Blah, blah, infection cakes (why would Biblical evil pass infection on through black bile making skin contact with uninfected victims?), virtually everyone gets infected throughout the entire film, and dude with a cross carved on his chest shows up to be suspiciously creepy, but Henry Rollins also shows up to tell everyone that this place is evil and a Nephilim is buried below the sands, and explain to us that Nephilim are evil, fallen angels from Heaven and they're buried in tombs throughout the world and a secret society is here to destroy the Nephilim before its soul is released.
OMFG. Nephilm are not fallen angels, they are the product of angels who banged human women that then gave birth to half-angel, half-human babies, can we get it right? Also, why is this such a Catholic film? I always feel like Nephilim-themed horror should be Jewish, but is it? Like, ever? No, it is not.
Not to mention they tried to pull the "all world religions have the same themes" line (ugh, they do not), and they said that "Hebrew" was a religion, I mean, what the fuck? That's just basic research fail.
But we get to the "Nephilim" and it's actually a grey alien buried in ice, and I see that it's just a rewritten script that they'd gotten really far in filming or something. Oh holy hell, this is so bad. So, so bad.
Long story short (too late), most people get infected (but not everyone), and everyone dies but Cuba Gooding, Jr. Valerie Cruz saves her daddy, Ron Perlman, who has been possessed by the Nephilim (???) by taking the possession into herself, the self-destruct has somehow been activated with just enough time for Cuba Gooding, Jr. to get away and declare himself a warrior for God in what's absolutely room for a sequel that will never be made because this is just so hideous and terrible. This entry has been cross-posted to Dreamwidth (
comments). Comments are welcome on either post.