Mythica - Der Totenbeschwörer

The first two Mythica films may have been cheesy low budget nonsense but they were enjoyable cheesy low budget nonsense.

But now they've brought in a new director who has managed to remove the all important enjoyable bit.

The guy has one trick, one single trick that he does over and over again and it goes like this...slow motion, suddenly fast motion, now slow motion again. And it happens all the time. Even just walking about among some trees or something people start slowing down then suddenly briefly speeding up for no reason at all. After about the 7000'th time this happens you just have to start laughing. I don't know, maybe his editing machine is broken or something but it certainly made this instalment of the Mythica series a chore to sit through. He better cut it out with the next one.

The failings of this film are in production and special effects. With some better editing and budget, it could have scored even higher for me because the story is a good one and the actors do their damnedest. That's what matters most. The bug man ( you'll know him when you see him) was particularly convincing. The final battle was very well written. The excitement was anime level, a genre in which everything is controllable. The story does not make sense without the previous installments and I am purposefully omitting that shortcoming in my rating. I am assuming you've seen the previous films and are up to date on the story. If so, you're in for some fun!

First-off I wanted to give a warning. The ratings suddenly exploded over night with 500 new 10 star ratings and the rating jumped from 6 to 9 stars. Seems a bit suspicious if you ask me.

That said, this film is like a filler episode in the Mythica story. Nothing much happens to progress the story. A bit cool dialogue and a new character keep it somewhat interesting. The fighting scenes and the new quest are far inferior though to the previous film - and this, plus the filler story, is why I didn't enjoy it as much.

If you want to continue following the Mythica universe, you should still watch it, but lower your expectations and don't expect as good a film as the previous one! I think it's justified to call this a filler episode - keep this in mind and you are good to go.

I enjoy the Mythica movies. They're not great but they're fine and there aren't a lot of options for those of us that like fantasy stories. If you thought the first one was watchable, then I'd say watch the whole series since they're all roughly the same quality IMO.

I enjoyed watching Mythica: The Necromancer. It escalates the conflict between the forces of good and evil nicely, and it develops the relationships between the characters quite well too. I thought the story was interesting and I did like the new evil character the team has to work with for most of the film. Szorlok finally makes an appearance too.

The negatives are not very many. There were a few story elements that seemed to be taken from The Empire Strikes Back. It hadn't occurred to me before but the comparison seems obvious now. Gojun is Obi-Wan. Marek is Luke, etc. Although I'm taken with Mythica, it's not in the same league as Star Wars. I always seem to find something I'm not entirely happy with in scenes involving Gojun and Marek, the same was true in this one too. The theme song didn't work for me this time either. It's great when they are singing it in Hammerheads near the start of the film but the version at the end feels very flat. It needs to be much more upbeat!