Legend of the Bog

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning

There seems to be a Breach of the Trade Descriptions Act going on with a lot of these straight to video action films, where the cover gives the wrong impression of what sort of movie it's going to be and even puts a lead star on the front cover that doesn't actually have that much screen time. Vinnie Jones does end up getting a bit more coverage than it first looks like he will, but he's still missing for quite a bit of it and certainly doesn't feel like the main player in it all. And while it looks from the cover like another one of his straight to DVD action films, it's actually more of a messy, jumbled horror/comedy sort of film that goes to both extremes with each genre.

Actually, this is Jones's second collaboration with, and the second feature film of director Brendan Foley, following his equally disastrous debut The Riddle, where Jones was also the lead. But here everything's really lumpen, with truly cheap looking production values, an incomprehensible, incoherent plot and Jones doing his usual silent, grumpy hard man act with some really flat dialogue to chew off. All this and a big, ogre some killer going around bumping everyone off.

I'm really not sure what anyone was trying to get at with this one. Jones should try and get back in theatres and Foley should think about packing it in. *

No...seriously...this is just plain boring. I have a fondness for watching Vinnie Jones in just about anything which seems to be both a blessing and a curse. He was great in Snatch, hilarious in Eurotrip, and awesome in Midnight Meat Train (despite having only one line in the whole movie...that's how cool he is). He may just be one of the most distinctly British actors in the history of cinema...when the dude's on screen you can't help but think "holy crap, that guy is British". But the blandness of Legend of The Bog is just plain inexcusable, Jones or not.

This movie doesn't really seem to know where it wants to go from the start. Is it a zombie movie? Kind of, but not really. There's people rising from the dead, but they're not zombies in the typical sense. There's pretty much nothing in the way of explanation. You're just meant to accept that 2,000 year old bog bodies are rising from their graves (or lack thereof) looking surprisingly alive and free from decomposition. Period. To be perfectly honest, this movie reminded me (often painfully) of that old episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 where they showed "Eegah". It's so similar in parts that it seriously makes me question the future of just about anyone appearing this movie. As I watched this movie I was fighting sleep from about 30 minutes in and briefly succumbed right near the end, nodding off momentarily. That's how boring it is...in a HORROR MOVIE, during the CLIMAX, when everything's supposed to go all to hell and be the most entertaining, I briefly nodded off. I didn't miss anything important, though at that point I wouldn't have cared if I had. Oh...and no violence? Seriously? All of the kills are done off screen which is just a huge party foul for a horror movie. Whatever...I think even writing this is giving this film more than it deserves. Skip it and watch something...anything...else.

Let me start by saying "I love Vinnie Jones." That being said, this movie is not up to his regular standards. The bog histories, if they were true, were interesting. The concept of people from thousands of years ago being killed and buried in the bogs was interesting. Them reanimating just out of the blue and seeking out a specific kind of person, that's a little iffy. Also the fact that all of these people just happen to converge on this same cottage on the same day is just too much coincidence as is not having phone service when they were apparently only about three miles from a road. I did not like the little love connection they felt needed to be in the movie. It added nothing to the story. This is in no way a horror movie. It is more something that is based on a false lore that has been told for years. Seeing Vinnie Jones was it's only redeeming feature.

I'm not going to bother to decide if this deserves a 3 out of 10, or a four, or even a 2. It was bad, so I'm leaving this comment at a 1.

Horror fans don't mind if their films aren't original, as long as it's done well. The genre is full of conventions, and originality occurs only with the smallest of twists on them. Fair enough.

The fact that the poster for this one has a big picture of Vinnie Jones on it - when in fact he's not the lead - if forgivable. Vinnie is always fun to watch anyway. However, just about everything else is poor, very poor.

Where to start? It's a film set in Ireland (outside Dublin) that has, as one would expect, a bunch of Irish people in it. And then there's the cockney "hunter", Vinnie Jones - along along with three Americans for good measure. One of the Americans is an evil property developer, building houses on the Bog.

Anyway, Bog Men can, apparently, be reconstituted when dipped into water. Okay, I can live with that as a horror fan. What i can't live with is the fact that the Bog Man make-up consists entirely of a set of bad teeth and a grunt. He wears an old kit from Giant Haystacks (if you're old enough to remember some classic wrestlers from yesteryear.

The film tries to tie up why these people are doomed to die, but it's never tied into the Bog story. Vinnie's character is one-dimensional and he's cruising through the roll. They (badly) CGI some flames at the end.

It's all so..... bad. The main thing it does wrong is that it's not even funny. It has sprinkles of humour in it that don't really work. It's not entertaining.... I was strained at the leash to tear myself away from the remote to turn this off.

Pity but this is a stinker, really poor. Oh well.

So, so bad. I'll be honest, I didn't watch the whole movie; I simply couldn't put myself through the whole thing. It was that bad.

The acting is horrendous. The dialogue is simple minded. The effects are definitely not of a 2009 film, even a low budget one.

The attempt at humor was insultingly bad. There was one scene where a brute bog monster made fur slippers out of 2 dogs. Why the dogs were tied up in the middle of the road is beyond my comprehension. Why a mindless monster cares about footwear is another puzzle to the logical mind.

Take my advice and do not watch this movie; you will only hate yourself if you do.