The Necromancer

Well that's 90 minutes I won't get back. What a crock of crap. I had high hopes for this film but was sorely disappointed.

Bad acting and weird accents. There were a few good bits but they were few and far between. I found myself questioning the production and costumes as the film was so poor. Not recommended.

This was a potentially interesting movie. The acting is generally fairly good in spite of some horrible dialog the actors had to unnaturally stuff into the scenes. The special effects were pretty poor. The battle scenes had potential, but the low budget forced them to skimp on a critical plot element. Once in the forest the movie takes a serious nose dive. Instead of horror you get boredom. There are also some big flaws such as self reloading muskets that just pull you right out of suspension of disbelief. A remake that spent time on the horrors Napoleonic soldiers faced. Then redid the entire forest element and made it actually scary and you have a really good movie. I'm sure the lack of money is responsible for a lot of the ills of this movie. Some were just bad dialog and unlikable characters. I suggest a pass on this movie unless you are looking for inspiration for an interesting plot to remake.

This film is so terrible. I couldn't work out if an actor in a moderately central role was giving the worst performance I've ever seen on the big screen or whether he was poorly served with some of the worst writing. So poorly edited it was jarring. One positive would be it sets the bar for bad films to be measured against.

The premise in itself is interesting. The script, the utterly insipid, simplistic dialogues and the amateurish acting (on a level with that of a not-so-brilliant high school troupe), paired with special effects clearly inspired by Pan's Labyrinth (albeit the version you'd expect elementary school children to make for themselves for Halloween) soon make it hard to keep a straight face.

Add to that a complete disregard for period detail and wigs so visibly artificial that you expect a label sticking out of them saying '100% polyester' and you wouldn't be surprised if one of the characters were to check his messages on an Apple Watch on screen.

Makes you wonder what the jury's standards are at the Bristol Festival. The real horror is thinking about what the other films presented will have been like if this is the winner.

Never normally bother writing an actual review but I feel it is my duty to warn others how absolutely awful this film was. Anyone who claims a film other than this is the worst of all time hasn't seen this. Lacks any sense of direction, often makes no sense, half the film is fuzzy out of focus twigs although that is better than the horrific acting the only scary thing about this film was that someone actually signed this film off as more than a failed gcse project