Deadwater

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

Or is it "onboard"? Well whatever it is (and emphasis on the "it"), there are far better efforts out there than this one. It tries pretty hard and unfortunately thinks it's more clever than it is. Still with no expectations at all, you might have a somewhat rewarding experience ... On the other hand, you could do a lot better with your time and watch a Lance Henriksen movie, where the movie is good too.

It's shot nicely though and there are a few nice scares (though it does suffer as some movies, from a strong beginning and very fast drop after that). The effects are good too, but that's almost it. A friend of mine told me, that there might be a music "mistake" at the end too. But why bother looking for a mistake like that?

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.

While the movie starts off strong, good background, decent acting and suspenseful script..... it kinda heads south about midway. The scene where the female, girl soldier gets all bloody was OK, until she had to have a shower in the middle of murder, deaths, and Kaos ..... Who does that? Then the plot slowly fades till the end with more deaths and her glowing eyes......I'm still trying to grasp what transpired... Not a clear ending. I've played through it several times and i just sort of made up my own ending. Seems the script writers just went on break and never came back. Sad, because this could have been so much more.

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".