Devolution

Needless to say that I had never heard about this movie titled "The Rise of the Beast" (aka "Devolution") prior to stumbling upon it and sitting down to watch it. I have to admit that I was harboring zero expectations to the movie, because it was just oozing with low budget feel and atmosphere, but I still opted to give the movie a fair chance.

Writers Max Brooks and Fil Freitas put together a very, very, very generic script and storyline for a creature feature of this type. So you're not in for anything grand or particularly revolutionary. And even for a creature feature, then "The Rise of the Beast" was a laughable addition to the genre. The storyline was not particularly enjoyable and it was somewhat of a struggle to sit thorugh 77 minutes of torture. I ended up giving up on "The Rise of the Beast" with only 22 minutes remaining, but by then I was ready to gouge my eyes out.

A creature feature is usually only as effectively entertaining and functional as the CGI rendered creature or creatures in the movie. And the ape in "The Rise of the Beast" looked like something from a discarded early 2000s computer game. So yeah, it was hard to take it seriously as a threatening creature when it looked so poorly animated and rendered.

The acting performances in "The Rise of the Beast" were fair enough, taking into consideration that the actors and actresses had virtually nothing to work with. Obviously I wasn't familiar with a single actor or actress on the cast list here, not that I will remember any of them from the performances I witnessed.

Visually then "The Rise of the Beast" was a dumpster fire. The CGI rendered ape looked atrocious. And a creature feature with horrible CGI is a game breaker, as it just makes the movie laughable. And such was the case with the poorly animated and rigidly moving CGI ape on the screen.

"The Rise of the Beast" is definitely not a movie I would recommend you waste your time, money or effort on. Some of us suffered through this ordeal in greater or shorter extend, so you don't have to.

My rating of director Jack Ayers's 2022 horror movie "The Rise of the Beast" lands on a two out of ten stars.

Getting wind of dangerous experiments, animal-rights activists team up with an insider to raid a facility owned by a large corporation conducting work on primates, only to discover the company's dark and terrible secret has instead unleashed a massive killer gorilla loose on them.

This was a pretty solid and enjoyable effort. One of the more likable elements is the cheesy and workable setup that gives this a great reason to have the group together and explore the treacherous facility. Getting just a bare hint of the company's intentions at the facility working on primates to tap into their enhanced strength and dexterity genes to aid in mankind's next evolutionary step, their quest to expose what's going on for the sake of the animals in captivity offers a highly enjoyable setup that's handled well enough with their quest to venture inside and stop them. Realizing what's happening at the facility with their experiments going further beyond what was expected and finding the truth behind what's happening, generates a lot of fun with the reveals and twists going on that come into play here. That setup provides a lot of fun creature action as a result of it going through the facility taking out whatever it can get its hands on. The initial sequence of it attacking the group and ripping the one friend to pieces in front of them offers a strong starting point to this with the resulting chaos and confusion leading to them being captured later on after escaping, while later scenes of the ape running wild taking out the security force or the scientists in charge feature some solid bloodsoaked kills as it also tears them apart. While offering more bloodshed than normal, these are more done in service of setting up the big sequence at the end with the transformation taking place as the one victim injected with chemicals during the film is turned into a deformed monstrosity to pay off that storyline quite nicely while also giving this it's positive moments. There are some minor issues holding this one back. The main factor here is the jumbled and chaotic order of events that tends to bring about some rather bizarre antics here. The group is captured and held by the security team near the start of the film and then we get an info dump about what's going on before the creature arrives to take the security out. This leaves the film without much in the way of villains for the vast majority of the running time with the creature's backstory invoking plenty of sympathy and the heavy forces group wiped out halfway through which causes a flat and underwhelming finale. As well, there's also the obvious CGI used for the creature which features an endless array of tactics that will be familiar to anyone who watches these kinds of films that isn't as painful as the other detriment that rightfully holds it down.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.

This one WAS really really awful! The CGI was awful, the acting was awful, the costumes were awful, props were awful, dialogue was awful, sound was okay, the sets were awful and the script was HORRIBLE, I mean do I really need to go on? I know actors need to have a job but this was the best they could come up with? If I were the actor(s), I'd fire my agent. Or start a new career. One hour and 14 minutes I will NEVER EVER GET BACK!!! I committed myself to watching it all the way through because apparently I am a masochist.

I gave it a 1/10. I was feeling generous because the sound WAS okay. I bet the soundman can get another job.

How did this get a 3+/5 star rating on Prime? Thankfully the movie is rather short, so the torture is not longstanding. The premise is quite cliche for a "monster" movie. The acting is at its best mediocre. And at its worst, its just bad. The script is so so. (It prevents me from rating this movie lower) The creature animation is of poor quality. The music score is passable to provide appropriate tension. It isn't the worst movie I have seen, but I do question my sanity for watching this to the end. Quality of monster movies these days are rarely good. This one fits that mold. Imdb needs to shorten the character requirements.

I hate, wasting my life on horrible films like this. Everyone involved except maybe the sound crew and writers should be banned from the film industry. This could have been at least a decent movie had it not been for horrible acting, horrible production, and horrible cinematography. I also hate that you have to give a star at all to rate this movie. Remember how we all hated Bird Box? This was much much worse. This was like someone decided to try their hand at making a movie, got with a High School AV group, and used the money from their piggy bank to fund the film. It's too late for me but you can still save yourselves.