Knights of the Damned

Anyone who can independently fund, produce and release a film using a small budget deserves huge respect. Especially given the fact they have so little talent at their disposal.

I saw the 2.5 rating but I weighed that up against the idea of potentially seeing some "hot" amazon warriors fighting dragons. Who wouldn't like that?

Unfortunately those amazon warriors were about as convincing as the UK's current response to the Covid pandemic. I would urge people to avoid this film and frankly I've been too generous with my rating.

Why is it bad? Awful, awful sound, criminal acting, terrible script, painful and at times childlike direction and a meandering storyline that is just banal at best. Give it a miss and definitely under no circumstances pay to watch this.

This film was bloody awful. There's really no other way to describe it. Just bloody awful and that's putting it mildly. I mean how does something this amateurish and sad even get funded or distributed? It makes absolutely no sense. None of the actors, if you can call them that, had the talent of your local thespian playhouse. I truly believe someone went to their local bar after work and said "My brother just got this cool new digital camera. Ya'll wanna make a movie?". They must have spent the twenty they had for a budget on a twelve pack instead of expenses. Save your money, time or bandwidth and watch Conan the Barbarian for the fiftieth time instead. Trust me, you'll be much more entertained and satisfied.

I love a bad movie, this is a bad movie, but not the sort to be enjoyed. It has taken elements that are currently popular and shoe horned them in to a movie very poorly. Even a porno version of Game of Thrones or Walking Dead (Series that this is trying to be) would have more story to follow than this.

I was initially hooked in by how awful the first scene was, it's truly awful but is funny. Slo mo was used on everything, someone had brought a camera that can do 120fps and they were making sure they were going to use it. There is a clip of the guy slipping on a rock in super slow mo only for it to turn out to be nothing… slipping on a rock…. totally pointless. This is how I felt about most of the content of this movie thereafter, it shows us something only for it to be pointless. There was loads of stock footage of bears and wolves in completely different environments adding nothing to the story (if you can call it that), just put in there for the trailer perhaps.

It feels like every part of this film was done on the cheap, like it was some sort of 'Challenge Anika' attempt, where they have 24 hours to make a film from start to finish with just the contents from an old garage to use as props and GCSE students to help out.

I did feel very sad at one point upon seeing the old Blue Peter presenter Tim Vincent had lowered himself to acting in the film. Part of me feels he was only brought in to exploit Blue Peter skills to make some of the paper mache props.

The biggest moment and shock in the film was that it's the first in a trilogy or at least it thinks it is. If they get the funding for another one of these, then everyone should buy themselves a camera with slow-mo functionality and have a go at making a truly terrible movie of their own.

In summary, it's bad, really really bad… seriously, just terrible.

Unfortunately the production values of this overshadow any redeeming features of the plot (so much so that I couldn't find any). Most of the acting was wooden, with the exception of one or two of the main characters. Some of the effects were moderately good (notably the blood splatters), but the CGI dragon was not-so. The sound editor ought to be shot, with most of the dialogue being drowned out by the music or, when there is no music, too quiet to hear. When there is music, most of it is fitting - except for in the tavern, when some sort of silly pop ballad played (which, one would assume was being played by the bard at the inn, on his modern guitar). I also can't believe they were that worried about marking their furniture that they had green baize on the bottom of some of the cups. Fortunately, Cosmeston medieval village pulled off the best and most authentic bits of the setting, but sadly the castle that features towards the end has far too many modern fittings, lighting, cables and other acoutrements to make me take it seriously, at which point I just started laughing about how little attention to detail there was and the fact that the gardens were floodlit, and the corridors contained a gazillion uplighters. The odd use of some sort of Chinese spear by someone in western gear also stuck out as particularly jarring!

When I see people rating movies like this at 8 to 10 stars something isnt right. Casablanca, On the Waterfront, The Godfather, Amadeus, even Raiders of the Lost Ark. These are movies that should get 10 stars. Or something in a specific genre like western or sci fi. The Good The Bad and the Ugly or Total Recall I would rate high. But this garbage???? Come on!!!! What do you rate those movies if this is a 8 star movie. So you dig deeper and without exception every single person that thought this movie was great and gave plus 7 stars or more oddly registered with IMDB 4 months ago. EVERY SINGLE ONE. Hmmm, how odd. Possibly some fake reviews??? Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.