Soul Searcher

Just rented this, another low budget British action martial arts… yawn. There are so many of these out there now that to be honest I'm starting to get bored. In the past two years a rash of badly acted and poorly shot British and even US low budget actioners have been released.

Working as I do for a cross Atlantic review site I get screeners of these and being that my speciality is action (and that I'm British) I get the dubious pleasure of reviewing an ever growing stack of DV features.

Soul Searcher is okay, a solid 2 ½ star movie. It's not badly acted, or badly directed, or badly shot but at the same time there was little to stand out. The central lead was dull and lacked life, and the film just felt like it needed something more to make it stand out.

As for the extras, it's an impressive pack to be sure but for my money the director should have been stopped from making his rather self involved behind the scenes documentary. If I hear how hard is was once more I will scream.

Soul Searcher tells an interesting story - what if a shy guy is offered the chance to become the Grim Reaper? The movie shows brief flashes of brilliance, especially the wonderfully detailed story about how the tradition of the Grim Reaper began. Unfortunately, that is the only interesting story that is fully told in this rocky turn at comicbook-becomes-reality.

The film's quality is low-budget (especially the banshee!), filmed at night and many of the scenes feel rushed. The acting is disjointed, with some actors being much better than others. Special effects suffer to the point that they can be laughable.

Yet somehow you care enough to root for the hero, who you know will vanquish the evil Dante....who might just be the man who wrote about hell centuries ago. To be honest, I'd love to see this story as an animated series. I want to know more about each character's story, and that just doesn't happen in this choppy movie. I'll keep my eyes out for more from director/producer/co-writer Neil Oseman.

the first time I tried to watch this I got bored and switched it off!

I gave it another shot and it does get better towards the end and looks impressive, just a shame the dialogue/story is so poor. What was achieved with the low budget is actually quite impressive visually, apart from a few dodgy effects. I think what this film would've benefited from is a stronger script.

One thing I can praise is the effort gone into the DVD extra's. I found the extra documentary, film school masterclass more entertaining than the film itself!

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This was, no puns intended, a movie I picked up to watch in replace of daytime TV during my off time from my graveyard shift job.

It has two downing points to it. First of all, it's theme could be related to BtVs or Angel. Seeing it that way, one can be left with the feeling of an unbought pilot. Secondly, the monster special effects, the route to hell and such are rather cheap. On the other hand, if one can accept that images and projections from hell would be difficult for a normal human mind to accept, would not be like a multi million dollar Hollywood production, then they are "acceptable".

But unlike most horror movies which are only good for one pass because afterwards, the shock is gone, this is good for a few watchings. It's a horror movie that doesn't depend on shock or scare to work, but rather a decent story to tell, to get across.

It has all the right elements. The underdog good guy, his watching elder, the best friend, the love of his life, a fairly psychotic enemy, the heartbreak, the salvation, the ace in the hole.

It's worth a look.

For a film that I have just read cost £20k, it was brilliant. however, i feel that certain areas not to do with how much it cost needed some attention! The script needed a bit more clarity and development. I thought the editing wasn't as tight as it could be - there needed to be more pace. But the sound, camera work/lighting were fab for its budget. Generally he got some high production values in - The fight scenes were choreographed pretty well too. I feel filmmakers like this should be encouraged, and I hope he finds a good team to help him out next time - he does deserve some decent funding. It's a very imaginative first attempt - well done! People like him should be helped out in the British film industry more. It's refreshing not to see yet another boring low budget drama or 'gritty' movie - they always seem to get made. It just goes to show that in this case low budget doesn't have to mean boring