Review of The Devil's Tomb (2009) by Phillip M — 24 Jun 2010

This is as bad as it can get. Really.

THE DEVIL'S TOMB is a direct-to-DVD movie, that really should have been direct -to-trash. Quite honestly, one of the worst movies I've seen in a long time, and I usually try to avoid movies that are of this caliber.

So what happens is, Gooding (who is terribly miscast) and his military squad are assigned a pretty darn important mission: going into a remote underground laboratory and rescue a scientist (Perlman--who should have never attached his name). However--plot twist!--the real mission *reading further will spoil the movie* is actually to make sure that scientist doesn't get out of this lab because a nephilim (a fallen angel, castaway from heaven) is located in the lab and whoever comes into close enough contact with it, they turn evil. End spoiler here, and any excitement that short summary may have provided.

Seriously, this movie had all the requirements to become the next TROLL 2--so bad it's so f-ing good. Instead, this movie is so bad that is so $#%@^#@ bad. Let me list some bad things about the movie.

First, let's talk about bad acting. Gooding should really fire his agent, because doing a movie like this never helps anyone's career. His movie choices as of late have been very sub-par and this movie only brings that to a lower level. The rest of the cast either overacts or underacts. Subtle, subdued acting doesn't exist in this world, you're at either poles of the extremes. Usually that adds to a movie's camp factor, but here it's painful.

Second, the horrific writing. Besides the cheesed dialogue and plot holes, the movie's script is pretty good, because that would mean that there would be no such movie called THE DEVIL'S TOMB at all. Instead, someone put their printer to use and wasted some paper.

What the script has the characters doing and saying is crazy, and maybe a little insulting to the American military. Examples (and spoilers), a whole squad wouldn't remove equipment from their possession after making sure one room of an entire labyrinth of a laboratory is cleared. No one is a big enough idiot to follow their child's voice when they know they aren't there; follow up--no one is an even bigger idiot to follow the voice of their unborn child twice. Even though you and your squad are the only people in the remote laboratory, and you've been in there for hours, when a naked chick somehow appears out of nowhere, your first reaction should be to make-out with her. That list goes on forever, but I'll stop there.

Let's list plot holes--yay! First one, who the hell was the first creepy dude that spat out the freaky black liquid? I'll tell you, because the movie seemed like it didn't really want to tell me. He is no one. His only use is to kidnap one of the squad members. He rants on about scriptures and the damnation of something, but that doesn't move this flick along. And then after that's done, he dies. Talk about script illogicality. It was too bad, cause he was a little bit freaky. Also, why is it that a knife to the back, and multiple gunshots to the torso have absolutely no effect on the nephilim host, but then it catches fire and he dies? Why doesn't the nephilim host leave the laboratory when it has the chance to, but instead babbles about religion for nearly ten minutes with a human?When a priest is trying to explain the situation, tie his wrists up and duct tape his mouth so that his explanations can't help you. *spoilers end here* This movie is full of inconstancies and unexplainable actions.

Third, visual/special effects. Granted, not a huge budget, so no surprise that the effects are as bad as the two previously mentioned aspects of the film. But still, when the makeup job makes a slashed open back look like candy, something isn't quite right.

Unfortunately, this movie has very little entertainment value. There are some scenes that do their job--maybe two or three--that grossed me out. But what this movie sets out to achieve (which I don't know what it is) I'm sure it doesn't achieve it. The movie drags on far too long in places, even though it's only 90 minutes. Even the open sequence--when the opening credits are intercut with video diaries of the Perlman explaining his situation--is such a bore. It tries to build up a tension, but it fails to do that and the constant edits are irritating and had me lose interest in anything he was saying. The same issue goes with Gooding's character's flashback sequences.

This movie could have been fun--it's a B-movie!--but instead, it doesn't know how to laugh at itself, or make the audience laugh either. I give it a 1.5/10, because no movie really deserves anything lower. I'm sure a lot of effort was put into this, even though it doesn't show it. Avoid this, it's not fun to watch, it becomes infuriating at an exponential pace.