The Devil's Tomb
Sub-Genre- Possession/Supernatural
In Attendance- Me
Cast Members of Note- Cuba Gooding Jr., Ron Perlman, Taryn Manning, Henry Rollins, Ray Winstone, and Valerie Cruz. Nice cast for a straight to DVD horror flick...
What's it about?- Mack, the leader of a crack team of commandos, leads a mission into the bowels of an Archaeological dig somewhere in the deserts of the Middle East; right off the bat he should have known not to trust the CIA, as they're obviously responsible for all of the world's evil-doing, including (but not limited to) deals with The Devil and/or evil Angels.
Once inside the underground Raccoon City-like bunker, they meet all sorts of interesting characters that are nothing but trouble, including a possessed doctor who quotes bible scripture, a straight-edge priest that riffs on spoken word poetry, and a dad that wants to kill his daughter. Gun fire and futility ensue.
I won't spoil what comes next, but suffice it to say that there's really only one place that anyone involved in this mission is headed...
The Good- Think Event Horizon, just in the desert instead of space; also, throw in some Prince of Darkness. Then, take a dash of Ron Perlman, a pinch of Ray Winstone, and add Cuba Gooding Jr., and you have a crazy dark horror version of Band of Brothers. Kinda.
This was an effective little movie, with a great cast, and an interesting premise; then again, I'm a sucker for the whole "Evil Demon" scene. I'm sure some people will have issues with this movie, but I don't see why... It did it's job of entertaining me while not shitting all over the genre, which is all any of us can really ask for these days. I was honestly expecting a Sci-Fi channel type of an effort here, but was pleasantly surprised instead.
The cast was a definite strong point, especially Cuba Gooding Jr.; he does his best Steven Seagal impersonation here as a tough as nails merc, and he actually pulls it off better than Steven Seagal usually does.
The Bad- Am I really supposed to buy Taryn Manning as a military doctor? Sure she's cute and all, and I'd love to someday have a love child or two with her, but accepting her as a gun wielding, tough as nails, camo-wearing mercenary named "Doc" is just too much for me to swallow.
The Downright Horrendous- The lesbian scene was pretty messy. As a piggy-minded male, I expect hot girl on girl action to be soft, unrealistic, and chauvinistically exploitative; you know, two ridiculously hot girls playing into my sad ideal about what sapphic love is all about... What I don't expect is for the women to start melting in mid-kiss. Or more than that even, for them to be kissing each others festering boils full of evil pus without really noticing. Thanks for ruining it for me, Jason Connery!
The Gory- All sorts of vomiting, puss filled boils, cutting, bleeding, ripping, tearing... this one was surprisingly gory.
The Naked- Yes! We do get one total hottie in the all-together, and even some mild lesbian action! I do have to say that the girl on girl stuff got pretty gross, pretty quick, but it was still nice to see them at least making an effort.
Best Line- "Stop name-dropping, Mack." or "Let me help you repent!"
What did we learn?- Cuba Gooding Jr. kicks ass. Also, you can't really ever hope to defeat an evil angel. Never. Unless you kick ass like Cuba Gooding Jr.
Rating- B (7.0/10) The Devil's Tomb was pretty entertaining and well made; a hell of a cast, nice atmosphere, liberal amounts of gore and nastiness... an overall good effort by director Jason Connery. Definitely check this one out when it hits DVD on May 26th.
Final Thoughts- Oh Taryn, why don't you return my calls/tweets/myspace emails?
