O Soldado Fantasma

This has no redeeming features at all, from first couple minutes you know how bad this is going to be. Two boys in forest one tries to shoot rabbit from 4 yards and misses target hitting metal post 2/3 foot higher up. Gun didn't appear to be shaped like a banana ! Next they go down a secret trapdoor with a torch, hold on there are two paraffin lamps alight but nobody mentions them or appears to see them. It goes on like this getting worse and worse. Whom ever directed this has too much money and not enough ability

Suspense, thrills, excitement, not in this film. I am sorry to say this is one of the worst films I've ever seen. The script was unbelievable, in the sense it was not remotely plausible and just shockingly bad. Despite having some good actors involved it appears they couldn't manage to breathe any life into this dreary film. The failure to develop any characters to any meaningful level meant there was no attachment to any of them. This lead to a lack of any feeing of suspense or any interest at all in their fate. It was a struggle to watch this film. I wasn't squirming with fear of a supernatural psychopath but of a fear it would never end. A good premise but very poorly executed.

Aux otherwise known as Soldier of War is an independent British horror movie, but one which badly suffers from mediocrity and incompetence.

You see Aux is really poorly made, awfully structured, dreadful sfx, naff creature effects and a mediocre cast. They swung above their weight on the budget they had, a point I'm often making that badly needs to stop.

To make up for the lack of budget they use a time tested method, namely not showing us what we want to see and hiding the antagonist away with selective camera angles. This makes the whole thing look cheap and nasty, because it simply is.

John Rhys-Davies looks out of place here, he's simply too good for this movie. He does however have a long history of acting in such roles which raises questions, is he "Paying back to the industry that made him"? alike people like Robert Englund? I mean this is the man who got fired from Sliders (1995) for criticizing the scripts, I highly doubt he's impressed with the writing in all these dreadful b-movies he pops up in.

What saves it to a degree is the concept. It tells the story of an undead soldier who has risen believing that the country is under attack by the Germans, thus a bloodbath ensues. Truth be told I liked this and the more that comes out about the soldier and the entire situation it gets better.

Great ideas, poor execution.

The Good:

John Rhys-Davies

Neat concept

The Bad:

Stock scream

Poor cgi

Some ropey acting

I would love to be able to give this film a ten because the premise is actually really smart, but it gets let down by not having the resources to deliver the scale and quality of effects needed to do the idea justice. It starts as a slasher film but quickly hints at supernatural undertones and neatly meshes the slasher/creature genres until the twist. No spoilers but John Rhys-Davies (who is as always superb here - "Nobody tosses a dwarf!") provides a chilling monologue that grounds the story in the true history of WWII, delivered in a way that is emotive, thought provoking and entirely unusual in this type of movie! I was utterly hooked from the first ten minutes, which are basically non-stop action, but the WWII hook really grabbed me and had me on the edge of my seat for the last act (basically an advance to battle which would've benefitted from a lot more troops!) I was still thinking about the story the next day and looked a few of the facts up on Google to check if stuff mentioned in the film really happened. Really recommend checking this out as long as you can look past its budget restrictions. Would love to see this concept remade with more money.

Aux is low budget movie and it shows: there are too many scenes where people do nothing but talk, the special effects are pretty lame and the locations are mostly exteriors (a wood).

Yet, I found it weirdly likeable: it's surprisingly well acted, the core concept is good (despite some illogicalities) and the zombie has a moving backstory. Overall it's a small project that gives its best and certainly not the worst WWII zombie movie out there.