Alraune - Die Wurzel des Grauens

Mandrake is about an expedition group funded by a very rich guy named Henry to retrieve a dagger...little do they know...a great evil lurks in the jungle!!

The film was surprisingly good...the acting was decent...CG was bearable and the storyline was original. It isn't your typical syfy for those reasons I'd say.

Although it was an above average syfy type movie...I found it not the least bit scary...maybe one or two parts during the film stood out for "frightening" but, other then it was somewhat boring.

The movie was also very predictable. What you think would happen...happens. So at times it would become hard to watch and hard to get into the movie.

All in all, it was not a total bust because the monster was original and the acting was pretty good. But other then that it's your typical syfy predictable not scary film.

After have seen a production from The Asylum, The Terminators, it was back again time to see a SyFy production. If you ever have seen a SyFy flick you will never forget it because they are mostly really bad. This one here was an average flick but again the cheap CGI teared it down.

As always the beginning is rather good and I thought, hell, this is going to be something in the Predator genre. But no, once the creature attacks it's just cheap CGI. The whole cocoon scene looked promising but of course they always did the killings off-camera. You do see some blood splattering here and there but it is never that frightening. Overall it looked like a flick to watch with the family on a Saturday night.

But this time they added a big name on the list, Max Martini from The Unit. The second main lead was by Betsy Russell, another big name from the Saw franchise but I was never involved with their characters. I couldn't care less if they were hurt or going to die. Storywise it was also a bit simple and you could see clearly what was going on.

I have seen worse, especially from SyFy but still, not a good movie.

Gore 1/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 2/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 0/5

I wanted to like this movie, filmed in Shreveport, La. including a better cast than some of these SyFy movies have, but NO. Andre Stevens of Dallas fame and b-movie star produced this film it has some good special FX, and production values, yet the script never works, the actors never capture their characters. Watch it you sit thru the whole thing thinking wow this looks better than most Saturday Night flicks, even the monster is fairly cool looking, and when its over you'll think what happened to my last two hours. The actor from the Unit isn't bad but you just can't seem to connect to anyone in the film. A few inventive moments nothing more.

This film opens with a woman running through woods (being chased by a mainly unseen being). This is never a good sign. If you've watched pretty much any handful of random horror films, you'll know that 'woman running through woods' is possibly the most overused cliché of the genre (with perhaps the teenagers having sex and dying being a close second).

That opening is a kind of warning of things to come. Some films thrive on having a low budget. The lack of money behind the picture forces the film-makers to use new and more subtle techniques to tell the story. Not here. This film has no budget and it shows in every scene.

It's about a team of archaeologists, sent somewhere in South America (like the location really matters!) to retrieve something for someone (again, such details are kind of pointless in the scheme of things). However, this 'South American' jungle looks suspiciously like some nice grassy fields in America. Plus the 'natives' also look a little Caucasian, considering they are supposed to have lived in the hot jungle all their lives.

The acting isn't all bad, but the dialogue is. Just because the film is set in a wood (sorry, jungle), the writers seem to want to make the characters talk like they're out of Predator. Yes, there's something hunting them, but whereas Predator used a monster that was actually there, the makers of Mandrake spent the entire $2.50 budget on some 'creepy' CGI tentacles. Woo.

If you like cheesy monster-munching movies, then you probably know plenty out there which will amuse and entertain (try things like Deep Rising, Tremors, or Grabbers to name but a few). Mandrake is not one of them.

As far as these syfy movies, which range from adequate to terrible, go this is better than most. It does have an intriguing premise, and starts off very well. And for a syfy movie it actually looks quite good, with the scenery quite nice, the photography not looking completely slip-shod and the monster creepy-looking and giving an adequate sense of menace. As for the attacks, two or three were nail-biting and quite gory, but some of them are quite tame.

Despite the cool premise and twenty-five minutes of genuine atmosphere, Mandrake quickly becomes repetitive and predictable. The dialogue is fairly unimpressive mostly, with a number of cheesy moments that never ring true, and the direction while better than you would expect is patchy particularly towards the end where the film unravels in credibility. The film's pace is uneven, the beginning is very well-paced, but some of the middle drag and the end feels rushed. I didn't find myself connecting to any of Mandrake's characters, and in all honesty I don't think the actors did either.

In conclusion, better than expected but that's not saying very much. 4/10 Bethany Cox