The Killing Box

I didn't expect all that much watching 'The Killing Box', but was surprised at just how involving and interesting this Civil War zombie tale turned out to be. Corbin Bernsen ('L.A. Law') and Adrian Pasdar ('Near Dark') co-star as former friends turned enemies who have to join together to hunt down a mysterious group of renegade soldiers. Ray Wise ('Twin Peaks') is fine as a hard-ass Colonel, and the supporting cast includes Martin Sheen, Billy Bob Thornton and a couple of Arquettes. The film is not without a few flaws, which presumably are from post-production editing (a director's cut under the title 'Ghost Brigade' is apparently available), but overall this is an effective and atmospheric thriller that is well worth tracking down.

The creative initial idea of an unstoppable army of Union and Confederate resurrected dead soldiers, gets trampled under the weight of it's limited budget, heavy handed direction, and chop shop editing. Many scenes are way too dark for interpretation of the action, while quite a bit of lines are garbled and incomprehensible. Character development is rushed and not acceptable. Other than the fresh concept of supernatural - Civil War genre mixing, there is little here to like. Billy Bob Thornton is wasted in a very small role, and Martin Sheen seems to be doing out takes from Gettysburg. "Grey Knight" should be considered more a curiosity than anything else, because it is simply too muddled and cannot be recommended as entertainment. - MERK

I wrote the alternate versions section, and I'll add here that the director's cut (GHOST BRIGADE on laserdisc, I don't know if you can get it anywhere else) is much better than the version called THE KILLING BOX, which I've seen on cable.

I don't much care for the shorter version because it tries to make the "good guy" better (by skipping his drug habit) and the "bad guys" worse (by not developing them as characters). All it really does is make the whole thing much more flat and the ending less interesting.

See if you can track down the longer version if the idea of a Civil War horror movie, or even another spin on HEART OF DARKNESS / APOCALYPSE NOW appeals to you. The other version's probably not worth your time.

The plot comes in a distant 2nd or 3rd in this movie, just watching some people run around in the wild, it ends up feeling a lot like a stage act. The uniforms and accents are decently portrayed. Martin Sheen does a great job at narration which adds much needed depth to the events and characters that the weak storyboard fails at. The directing and music isn't bad and at times I found it easy to nod off. But when you consider the general entertainment value instilled in this movie its still good.

The version I saw of this film, was called "The Killing Box" and this film had a whole damn lot of potential, but sadly isn't as great as it could've been. A civil-war movie mixed with a supernatural theme and a most peculiar cast (Adrian Pasdar, Corbin Bernsen, Ray Wise, Billy Bob Thornton, Martin Sheen, David Arquette, Matt LeBlanc,...). It really is a challenge spotting all of them. It's also hard to pinpoint where exactly the movie comes short. The flaws are there, I just can't really pinpoint them. Apparently a lot of the movie ended on the cutting room floor in post-production, so that could explain quite a bit. But there seems to be a director's cut with a much longer running time out there, under the name "Ghost Brigade". In this version the main characters have a lot more depth and should be more interesting. Even the unstoppable ghost brigade should have much more screen time and background-story in this longer version. So someone release this director's cut version on DVD, and I just might pick it up.