Director: Adam Werth
Year: 2024
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Creature Feature
Plot:
In the middle of a massive war, the King of a small kingdom sends out for a group of professional monster hunters to help deal with a slew of monstrous creatures living in the woods that have been trouble for other hunters over the years and set out to finally kill the fabled creatures.
Review:
Overall, there’s a lot to like with this one. One of the better aspects featured here is the strong and impressive setup that allows for a lot of solid period-set action. The main setup of the war throughout the kingdom involving a slew of creatures attacking their soldiers and holding the King under such duress that he sends for a group of monster hunters to stop the creatures leading to them working their way through the kingdom to finally take it out gives this a strong overall starting point. While we get tons of excessive characters and brief appearances along the way, the fact that there’s a lot of great work here in getting the different relationships established not just within the Kingdom with the Royal Guard and the rest of the guards but also the monster hunters gives them some personality for later on.
That provides the film with plenty of exciting battle scenes featuring the different groups battling the monsters or other threats in the area. Initially introduced fighting a horde of rebellious hooligans in a local bar and handling everything cleanly, their struggles against the different creatures in their struggle to get to the final creature terrorizing the local woods. This has some great action and bloodshed in the confrontations ranging from numerous sword battles against the creatures slicing them to pieces which offers up the gruesome make-up work on the various kills and the creature costumes used here with the different creatures shown to be distinct and memorable enough to be quite likable. These are all that work nicely here.
There are some factors here that bring this one down. Among its biggest issues is the series of random, useless characters brought on board simply because the origin status requires a series of cannon fodder characters to be slaughtered. This has way too many people here that serve no purpose being either background characters in random scenes or just getting served up to the creatures to be slaughtered which leaves everything so cluttered that it takes a while to figure out what’s going on. Taking so many one-shot figures or recurring characters that we’re trying to keep track of in regards to what their purpose is in the kingdom as the simplistic main story here would have provided this with a lot to like only for the cluttered first half to make it a bit more troubling having these extra moments that aren’t necessary here.
The other factor with this one is the last act that manages to add in more than necessary here to be quite a confusing addition to the storyline. Slaying the main monster far too early than necessary and returning for a feast in celebration, it includes a rather bizarre storyline about the group getting taken prisoner after a duel and then forced to defend the castle from a secret monster held captive by a traitorous member of the cabinet that has a lot to like but it’s tacked onto the film as if from a different movie entirely by just inventing problems for them to deal with for no reason. Combined with the somewhat obvious low-budget limitations present at times, these really hold it down.
Overview: ***.5/5
A quite fun period-set creature feature, there’s a lot to enjoy with this one that manages to hold itself up over a few drawbacks that are present throughout here. Those who appreciate this kind of genre fare, are curious about it, or appreciate the creative crew will have the most to like here while most others out there should heed caution.
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