Tasmanian Devils

This movie had some good points:

Good gore, Reasonably entertaining idea, Mostly good acting, Good casting of known actors.

That being said, the acting was pretty bad even from the actors who've done better acting. Namely Roger Cross' acting in this was overblown and terrible...

Mike Dopud and Kenneth Mitchell were the standouts in this film. Terry Chen and Rekha Sharma were decent in the roles they were given.

I've seen better acting from Danica McKellar in other movies, and she was mostly good in this but had some moments of badly delivered dialog. But, on the plus sign she spent the latter half of the movie in a white t-shirt.

The one-off Aussie actors were terrible.

All in all, if you like the actors in this movie and want to waste two hours you'll never get back on a Bad B-Movie then give this one ONE viewing ONLY. You'll regret if you revisit it a second time, probably.

6 base jumpers (5 guys and only 1 girl) fly in a chopper to some forbidden area in Tasmania. Once they arrive, the first goof jumps, waits to long to open his chute ends up crashing through trees, falls through the ground, and gets impaled on a pointy rock. His blood flows through some channels and starts bubbling. Now something awakens in the cave.

Eventually some of the others make it down there but they hear something and run away. Meanwhile the park rangers are looking for them. They find them as they run and arrest them. There are three ranchers, 2 guys and a girl who knows about aboriginal mythology.

When she hears their story she has an inkling of what is going on. The ranchers check out the cave and find that what the others are saying is true. As they all drive back to the station, they are attacked by something with a glowing red mouth. Two of the ranger are caught. The rest escape after getting a closeup look of what they're facing. From the ranger girl we learn that the things are ancestors of the Tasmanian Devil that were said to eat humans whole. But these things don't have hair but more of a dinosaur stone-like appearance. They scream like Tassies, have a glowing red mouth, and are attracted to noise.

One guy who is gung-ho and another guy try to run to the helicopter to rescue the others but things don't turn out well. Next they try to trap the devils in a cave. That doesn't work either. By now most of the bunch are dead and the remaining ones will give it one last shot.

It's not a bad idea to make a horror movie about Tasmanian Devils. This one is your usual Syfy fare--on a low budget, filmed in Canada, and with lousy effects. Initially effects seem promising. During the night chase sequence, the creature looks well-done, but once things shift to day the creatures look like 80s CGI effect. The story is alright for what it is, the cast is OK, although it could have used some more females. I'm not sure who exactly the audience is supposed to be for these movies but perhaps they would like it, otherwise there's not much here that stands out.

As another Aussie, I didn't mind this all that much. I read a heap of complaints about the accents and that it wasn't filmed in Tazzie. True. Bad accents, not Tasmania, parks employees with sidearms. Who cares? That's like watching Sharknado and complaining that sharks don't fly, or Big Ass Spider and moaning about how spiders don't grow that big.

Same for the whinges about the Devils not being actual Tazzie Devils. Duh. Of course they're not. They're special supernatural devils.

It's a farcical horror movie. It's not meant to be factual. That said, it's not a brilliant one, but if you're looking for a fun farcical horror, this isn't too bad. If you want it to be about real Aussie parks and wildlife or high drama... Erm... Leave this be. If you had fun with Sharknado and Big Ass Spider! then maybe you might like this.

Three forest rangers in Tasmania stumble across a group of base jumpers who are in the park illegally . They frantically tell the rangers that one of their team has been killed in a cave by something and that something is still in the cave . What ever killed their colleague is hostile and it's not alone

If I'd seen TASMANIAN DEVILS a few weeks ago I would have dismissed it as yet more brainless clichéd fodder from the SyFy Channel but I still had a sense of disappointment from a recent trip to the cinema where I watched WORLD WAR Z which cost me £7.80 to watch and Paramount Studios $200 million to produce . I'm guessing in terms of production TD cost closer to the rice of my cinema ticket than WWZ . One very common and vocal criticism of the Pitt epic was the conspicuous lack of blood and gore , along with a lack of suspense . It says something that despite all the money thrown at it TD is slightly more effective as a suspense driven horror movie TD beats out the brain dead undead epic spectacle of WORLD WAR Z

Don't get me wrong I'm not for a second claiming TD is some sort of lost underlooked gem just waiting to be discovered by a wider audience because it's not . It's merely a low budget horror movie featuring sketchily drawn characters played by a journeyman cast hiding out in dark remote woodland and stalked by hostile viscous creatures . The clichés come thick and fast but what the film does it does relatively well . It also contains a bit more blood and guts you'd expect in this type of TVM and an early death with a character impaled is genuinely shocking . Perhaps if the production team of WWZ studied this film - which coincidentally features monsters attracted to sound - in depth their own film might have been better received by critics

I knew what sort of a film I was in for the moment I saw the CGI of the helicopter flying over what looks strangely looks like Canada, not Tasmania? LOW BUDGET B-GRADE?? My favorite!! My low budget suspicions were confirmed when I heard the first Australian accents.

It was at the 7 minute mark when I heard the Aussie accent. Awesome!! The tourists are briefed on the "Tasmanian Devil" by Danica McKellar. (That's Winnie Cooper of The Wonder Years..) The Australian teenage tourist girl (Julia Sarah Stone) sounds like she just stepped off the 1986 Crocodile Dundee film set and watched a lot of Crocodile Hunter episodes. Only to be topped off with Ranger Danz entry and his Aussie accent, yikes!! That was funny.. Thank-you for the laughs.. This film is turning into a comedy. Excellent, no harm in that..

If you are looking for a well made film with a crafted story of importance, you'll be disappointed. This is a low budget piece of B-Grade garbage. Most film makers would find that insulting, but these are the sort of films I love to watch. I was entertained for the evening, so Thank-you for your B-Grade film. Continuing on with my hunt for Low Budget B-Grade films..