continuumx

My first thought on starting this movie was, "Someone made their table-top rpg campaign into a movie". As it turns out, it's actually the first episode in an on-going series. Too bad most of it seems to be unavailable to watch.

The first part sets up the villain and introduces the main characters. This part of unusually brief for this sort of movie. It gives you the basics, introduces the characters and gets right into the action. It's not 15 minutes into the movie when we get the first battle scene.

This is not bad for what it is. The acting isn't the greatest but it's above average for this sort of movie. The costumes are pretty good for a low budget fantasy movie. The fight choreography is a bit awkward but not jarringly so. Again, it's above average for this sort of movie and there's a good amount of action. It's not dominated by exposition scenes like a lot of these are. The plot moves along at a good pace.

One thing to know is that this is not a stand-alone movie. It's the first episode in an on-going series. IMDB lists five of these but Tubi TV only has the first and most recent entries. I can't find any place to legally watch the other three. I tried the director's website but the link for the second one goes nowhere. Their Discord link is an invalid invite. Without some way to legally watch the rest of the series, I have to dock this heavily because it doesn't work at all as a stand-alone movie. There is no ending.

This movie is based on Fantasy Flight's Midnight setting for Dungeons & Dragons. The basic premise for the setting is something like "What if Sauron won the War of the Ring?" The world is a Middle Earth analogue complete with versions of prominent locations like Gondor, Lothlorien and Erebor and analogues of characters like Galadriel. The setting picks up around a century after the Dark Lord's victory with the people all oppressed and miserable and all the land covered in shadow except for the Dwarves and Elves holding out in their lonely mountains and magic forests. The Dark Lord, Izrador the Shadow out of the North is more akin to Morgoth being an actual deity and having his dark fortress in the far North.

This serves as a decent introduction to the setting. You could do worse than telling prospective players in your Midnight game to watch this movie to get the feel of it. Unfortunately, it doesn't serve as a movie on its own all that well. There's a lot of exposition and setup but not much in the way of payoff. It's like getting the backstory of a D&D campaign but it ends just as the actual campaign would start. There is a lot of talking and very little action. The ending is something of a wet fart. The story is about to start and then the movie ends.

The second this started, I suspected that it was made by the same people behind Little Red Riding Hood (2016). Sure enough, it is.

It has the same odd lack of soundscape covered up by repetitive music. There is hardly any ambient sound at all. It's like they used whatever the camera microphone picked up and that's it.

Both movies have two storyline that they swap back and forth between. One takes place in the past while the other takes place in the modern day.

Iren Levey stars in the past part of both movies. Her line delivery is terrible in both so there's some consistency there. She is hot and has a brief nude scene here so there's that anyway. In both movies, she starts out wandering through the woods and then transitions to wandering through a castle where she runs from monsters. I am 99% sure it's the same castle in both movies. In Red Riding Hood, this is the main story. Here, it is mainly padding and could be cut from the movie without losing anything.

In Little Red Riding Hood, the present parts are just a stupid woman wandering around a house and then getting killed. It is mainly padding and could be cut from the movie without losing anything. In this one, it's the main story, such as it is. There's a scientist lady doing sciencey science with her TNG tricorder prop. There's a biophasic organism which is totally impossible. What's a biophasic organism? The movie doesn't bother explaining this. It's doing...something. They fight it. Whatever. Love or something. None of this makes any sense or goes anywhere.

This movie is terrible for all of the same reasons that Little Red Riding Hood (2016) is terrible. One thing I can compliment it on is the costumes in one scene. There are several of what appear to be Tudor-ish era costumes and they are quite good. I can only assume that they knew some people who were really into Ren Faires. I doubt they spent the money on these costumes and only used them for one scene. These things are not cheap. Also, the Snow Queen is much less stupid looking than the Master from Little Red Riding Hood.