The Dark Knight

source: Dark Nemesis

A film with many titles: The Dark Knight (not Batman), Dark Nemesis, and a title frame called it, Ferocious. But it is long, slow, and boring. The girls wear those white face masks from The Purge. But when the heroine girl removes hers, you see she should have left it on. It makes sense that a top fighter girl would have a homely, masculine face. But that doesn't mean I want to look at it. And I was sorry this long, slow, boring film wasn't better. Seen on Tubi, the free streaming site, which has many low budget indies, foreign films, box office flops, oldies, and now, live TV.

Mildly entertaining at best but poorly done in all venues, is laughable instead of being a sci-fi drama. I do not know how it was originally written but the outcome is abysmal due to bad acting, bad direction, lousy photography & editing, terrible CGI/Green Screen outcome, etc. Brief Synopsis: Another post apocalyptic flick where society is plunged into pagan gangs (The 'leaders' were called warlords in this movie) who live with brutality & without any form of justice, just 'might makes right'. In a battle to defeat one of the opposing but wealthy warlords some of the victorious fighters steal some of the losers silver and abscond. The pursuit is on for the thieves, which happen to be this movie's heroes. Some of the warlord's witches are leading the pursuit but eventually fall in with the thieves. The CGI monster is laughable and indestructible until they learn it's Achilles heal, silver (It kills werewolves right!). They eventually kill several of the beasts and make it to safety beyond the forbidden land but leave many monsters alive for a sequel... God forbid!

With a budget of $10000, you can't expect much from a fantasy movie and this is still pretty poor given the circumstances. The CGI gargoyle things look about what you'd expect for such a low budget, but the writing and acting are what really hold this back from being a true hidden gem in my opinion. The story itself is fine and the locations they shoot in are nice but in the end, it feels like a bunch of amateur LARPers running around the woods fighting imaginary monsters. And I love it for that. This movie is not for everyone, it's probably not for most people, but it feels genuine and not like a soulless cashgrab. The Asylum produces movies of about the same technical quality, but a lot of them just feel hollow because they're made in a rush to con you out of $5 at a Walmart. This feels like a bunch of 20 to 30-year-olds had a really fun D&D session and wanted to make a movie about it. Can most of the cast act? No. Do they have the budget for this? No. Is half the movie just them walking through the woods? Yeah. Did I enjoy it all the way through? Absolutely.

Post-apocalyptic worlds in movies seem to either go cyberpunk or go medieval. Here it is the latter as a group of soldiers desert their warlord and pinch his silver and go "beyond that mountain there" to a new life. Unfortunately some of the warlord's white-faced assassins are on their trail and beyond that mountain are ferocious beasts. Most of them get killed. Apart from a few nice visuals this is a dull film. The cinematographer goes in for constant shaky cam that only gives one a headache. The characters were uninteresting. There were a lot of interesting trees though.

The camera in this film is distractedly shaky... was the cameraman drunk? Every time I looked at the screen the cast were running around in various forest scenery without any real apparent goal. I wanted to forgive and forget the obvious low budget and enjoy what this could have offered, unfortunately it only had boredom to serve.

This movie is terrible. WAY too much running in one direction or another. I fast-forwarded through approximately 80% without missing much. Lots of intent looks, and fake fear that was not convincing. I'm sorry I wasted part of an evening on it. And can anyone tell me why it's listed on IMDb as The Dark Knight but being marketed on DVD as Dark Nemesis? I can't figure that one out unless it has to do with the Batman release around the same time. If I had read the reviews before, I wouldn't have bothered. The 'fake' monsters didn't bother me as much as all of the pointless running back and forth; first back, then forth, over and over and over.

Because, honestly, it has those Sci-Fi Channel level aspects- No real violence, bad CGI monsters, poor acting. Inexplicable breaks in the action where someone would put a commercial. The plot is that a group of soldiers in a post-apocalyptic world rob their warlord and flee into a forbidden forest where monsters dwell, pursued by the all-girl assassin squad. There's a battle at the beginning of the movie, which is where I suspect that they spent all the money. Most of the film is spent on running in the forest, where they pretend to fight the bad CGI monsters and act impressed. Because the all-girl assassin squad wears masks, we don't get any range of emotion from them. The guys don't have any excuse at all. Nothing anyone does in this movie makes a lick of sense, really.

When I rented this movie it was called "Dark Nemesis" and is what I call a "TGFFF" movie: Thank God, for Fast Forward. In fact, this sucker is so bad, I fast-forwarded it to the max. The "monsters" are totally fake and cheap. They have wings and zoom around, but when they chase the heroes (who are on foot), they somehow cannot catch them. They have huge teeth but don't bite off heads, which it what you would expect. The dialog is expositional and pedestrian: it tells us what we already know, then tells us again and again and again. I refer to scene on a bridge between the safe world and Shadowlands (which, in a voice-over at the beginning of the movie, we are warned is a "very bad place" where "monsters dwell.") Then this guy (obviously doomed to die) on the bridge tells our heroes the same thing . . . twice. Plus, just in case we are deaf or stupid, a sign on the bridge arch says, "Turn Back." Later in the movie, the actors very slowly walk up and down this basement being stalked by a monster you never see (an over-used cliché) and they do this for maybe ten minutes. Normally, I enjoy monster movies, but this one is a total waste of time. As for paying homage to other movies . . . I would say they plagiarized other movies and did it badly. I gave it 1 out of ten because this rating has no minus numbers.

The effects, costumes, action sequences and production are what you would expect from a low budget film. Despite this, I enjoyed it. Its original & offbeat enough to not be too cliché or predictable. The actors do a good job of plying their craft. There are attempts at comic relief thrown in that satire other movies and others that have a style all their own. All in all, a quality b or c movie production. More fun & interesting than some overdone, big name & budget, productions. Better story, character development and acting, too. I gave it an 8.