Deadwater

Even taking into account that this is low-budget, Black Ops is truly a horrendous pile of steaming crap. Watch this at your own peril. The film combines an element of supernatural horror and an action/adventure military flick, but fails on both counts.

There are better films that touch on the same current topic of Middle Eastern terrorism and the use of torture and extraordinary rendition. There are also numerous horror movies that are infinitely more satisfying.

The camera work and audio are crisp and professional-grade. The storyline, dialogue and acting are not.

1 star out of 10.

The Horror Channel announced this film was NAZI DAWN I had no idea what NAZI DAWN was about so looked up it on this site . Some silly story about six chicks getting involved with dead fascists . If nothing else it was a very recent film and I'd have the dubious privilege in being the first reviewer on the page . I did think it slightly strange that for a film where the protagonists were going to be slutty teenagers it starts on board a ship in the present day Persian Gulf . Within 20 minutes I started thinking there was a blooper somewhere and looked up the film roles of Lance Henriksen and Gary Stretch because this almost certainly wasn't the film that the Horror Channel claimed they were broadcasting .. And it wasn't , it was a 2008 film called BLACK OPS

I'll watch NAZI DAWN whenever it gets broadcast and compare it to this one and in the meantime wonder if it might be better than this one which is a dark horror thriller . When I say " dark " I don't mean it has a gloomy downbeat atmosphere I mean someone has failed to pay the electricity bill which means it's almost impossible to see what is going on so you just have to concentrate on the dialogue which isn't up to much . By concentrating on what is being said you do notice something very unlikely and that is Henriksen and Stretch play characters of father and son . What's unlikely about this you ask ? Absolutely nothing except Henriksen talks with a heavy American accent and Stretch talks with a broad English accent . If you are expecting an explanation for this your hopes are raised when father character starts mentioning his wife and family and you expect him to say he sent his son off to public school in England but this goes totally unresolved and the story continues as the audience wander around in the dark on a visual and narrative level in this generic and muddled horror thriller

Oh when oh when will I learn not to let my absolute adoration of Lance Henrikson make me sit through even extremely bad films Ie. pretty much anything post-"Millennium". This brain-dead little number is no different. Attempting to tie a Iraq war film with a supernatural ghost story may work on paper, but this is not paper and the result is an absolute mess that's nearly unwatchable. Bad acting, bad special effects, incoherent storyline. One can go right down the list of bad film-making 101 and put checks down it. The sad thing is I KNOW this won't be the last movie I watch from Henrikson, i still believe the guy rocks. But it will be the last Roel Reine flick that I watch.

My Grade: D-

DVD Extras: Director's commentary; One night on the set; Alternate opening; deleted scenes; Trailer for this movie; and trailers for "War, Inc.", "Player 5150", "Day of the Dead", "Three Days to Vegas", "Jack & Jill Vs. the World", "the Amateurs", & "Rockaway"

the script was rewritten and the film re-shot.

The acting was watchable but the dialog was pretty blasé.

The director must have blown his budget in the first 20 minutes of gore because after that it was "let's turn the lights down real low so no one can see anything and generate some fear that way." Although the cast only had one woman, they still found a way to have a scene with her naked in the shower. If that doesn't speak volumes about this film, maybe you will enjoy it.

I wont spoil it for you with details but the ending sucks. You'll be able to guess what happens at the end by 0:30 in (military time).

Don't waste your time here, watch Outpost again... it's the same story done on a ship...

OK...OK... It's not going to win any awards! But it is a great study (listen to directors comments) on how to make a low budget ($350,000) thriller in 15 days. Shot with two Panasonic HVX-200 HD camcorders on a docked WWII Liberty ship in LA, the 15 man crew did an amazing job in the cramped sets they had to work with... which is why the lighting is minimal. But isn't that the way it's supposed to be in the typical "spooky house" (the ship) movie. The writers simply cranked the script out after visiting this museum ship...and they acknowledge that much. They simply wanted to have fun making a movie. One unintentional hilarity is the similarity to part of the plot line to "Ghostbusters".