The Rangers

My first thought on starting this movie was, "Someone made their table-top rpg campaign into a movie". As it turns out, it's actually the first episode in an on-going series. Too bad most of it seems to be unavailable to watch.

The first part sets up the villain and introduces the main characters. This part of unusually brief for this sort of movie. It gives you the basics, introduces the characters and gets right into the action. It's not 15 minutes into the movie when we get the first battle scene.

This is not bad for what it is. The acting isn't the greatest but it's above average for this sort of movie. The costumes are pretty good for a low budget fantasy movie. The fight choreography is a bit awkward but not jarringly so. Again, it's above average for this sort of movie and there's a good amount of action. It's not dominated by exposition scenes like a lot of these are. The plot moves along at a good pace.

One thing to know is that this is not a stand-alone movie. It's the first episode in an on-going series. IMDB lists five of these but Tubi TV only has the first and most recent entries. I can't find any place to legally watch the other three. I tried the director's website but the link for the second one goes nowhere. Their Discord link is an invalid invite. Without some way to legally watch the rest of the series, I have to dock this heavily because it doesn't work at all as a stand-alone movie. There is no ending.

This is what happens when you have a nerd with a bright idea of bringing a digital videocamera with him to their weekly LARP (live action role-playing) game sessions in the forest.

While this project definitely had the heart in the right place, and was made by geeks with a passion for LARP, then it hardly constitutes being a properly entertaining movie. It was weighed down by a very low budget feel and atmosphere to it, and it really felt like it was just a videotaped LARP session by adult geeks running around in costumes.

Even the costumes felt low budget and were clearly something that you can buy in any gaming store that sell LARP items. And for a movie that was supposed to be set in a fantasy setting in a medieval fantasy realm, then people were surprisingly well-groomed, and the clothing was freshly washed and spotless. It just reeked to high heaven of being a LARP project and people not wanting to damage and weather their LARP equipment bought with hard-earned money. It just didn't pass as being believable. And some of the orc masks were so fake that you could see it was latex masks being worn. And I loved the scene with Kulta, where you could see that they hadn't even bothered with covering his shoulders with that dark make-up, so you could see his regular Caucasian skin so clearly. It was just idiotic. And also some of the wigs that the shadow elves were wearing were so fake that even a blind man would point them out as being wigs.

As for the storyline, well that part, at least, they got working for them, because it definitely felt like something taken out of a fantasy role-playing game session. But again, something that translated well to the screen? No, not so much. Especially because it was weighed down by an overwhelming sense of it all being fake props and less than mediocre acting performances.

The acting performances weren't something you'd write back home to your friends and brag about. Some were fair, albeit not memorable, while some were just downright painful to witness.

I am sure that the LARPers whom participated in acting out the story and the characters in this movie had fun. And I, as a role-player (but not LARP) myself, really wanted to enjoy this movie. But I just couldn't. It was slow paced, it had pointless and shallow characters often portrayed by inadequate actors and actresses, and the whole movie was just lacking the grit and grime that you'd see on people, clothing and the environment of a medieval fantasy world.

Clearly an amateurish project with the heart and spirit in the right place. But perhaps next time don't bring a camera to your LARP sessions.

This is really terrible. The good news is that I played it in background when I was table top role playing.

Some of the make up was very good.

Avoid if you're looking for a decent film.

This is one of the movies that make you realize why you can´t trust the IMDB ratings. It´s rated over 8 and every actor is not even up to C standard. Pure disaster and probably high voted by the actors/actresses closest family.

The average rating for this "film" is way over what it should be. I think all the "actors" in this must have come on here and voted. Paul Haakonsen's review sums it up perfectly and I think his vote was generous. Avoid like the Black Death.