Demônios da Tasmânia

Tasmanian Devils (2013)

** (out of 4)

A new year brings us new monster flicks from SyFy. Oh yeah. A group of base jumpers head to an off limits location when one of them is killed and his blood awakens the deadly title creature. Soon the base jumpers as well as a forest cop (Danica McKellar) are trying to figure out a way to kill the ancient beasts. TASMANIAN DEVILS is actually a pretty decent monster movie but about the half-way point it crashes into a wall and simply runs out of gas for the finale. I will admit that for the first fifty-minutes or so that I thought the film was a lot of fun. This is due in large part to the creatures, which obviously look fake but I still liked how they actually looked. I guess if the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were made into a horror movies and ran on four legs then they'd look something like the monsters here. Their ugly little faces were actually a good look for a monster and they certainly help carry the picture. There's also quite a bit of gore for fans of the red stuff, although the first death is one of the most memorable in horror history simply because you're asking yourself how the hell this person is still alive after what originally happens to him. Even the performances are better than you'd typically get from a film like this with McKellar keeping one's interest throughout. The biggest problem is that there's really not much interest in the characters and in the second half of the film we spend a lot more time with them and they're just not really interesting. Still, fans of this type of movies know there's much worse out there.

I will admit it by saying that I do hate many of SyFy's movies with a passion. I'll also be honest in saying that I was expecting to hate Tasmanian Devils. So I was surprised at how surprisingly not bad it was. By all means it is not great but it is much more tolerable than most SyFy movies. I did find the first hour of Tasmanian Devils entertaining. The creature effects are fake(though not as bad as the horrid CGI helicopter at the start), which was more than less what I was anticipating, though I did find the creatures themselves quite creepy and fun. The gore wasn't excessive and didn't cheapen the death scenes, which were more inventive and suspenseful than the usual SyFy death scenes, which are usually toned-down and like going-through-the-motions. The editing isn't too choppy, the scenery is quite nice, the story does divert your attention(that is in the first hour) and the acting while not great is better than average for SyFy. There are entertaining moments as well(cheesy of course but more in a fun way than infuriating), such as the death of Apolo Ohno, Winnie Cooper attacking the creatures with a flame-thrower and the hilarious close-ups of Danika McKellar gnashing her teeth and wrinkling her nose.

For all the good things about Tasmanian Devils there do come a number of debits. The dialogue is terrible(hardly surprising, I don't think I have seen a SyFy movie where this wasn't a weak point) and the music is generic, but the biggest problem is how the movie really runs out of steam in the second half. Here the creatures are under-utilised which dilutes the tension and fun factor, and things get more serious. This wouldn't be a problem if it was a tone that was maintained throughout the movie and if SyFy were any good at trying to develop or humanise characters. Instead what happens is that the second half feels as though it belongs in a completely different movie altogether. The pacing is sluggish, and while there is an attempt to humanise and get to know the characters it just felt flat and lifeless, so despite these efforts we end up not caring or finding out enough about them. And unfortunately the fun and tension in this half is nowhere near as effective as it was in the first half, and the ending feels contrived and rushed through.

All in all, I was mixed on Tasmanian Devils. It was much better than I expected it to be and it is easily one of SyFy's more tolerable efforts, but at the end of the day it was a decent enough if not entirely memorable outing. 5/10 Bethany Cox

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..

A group of adventurers land their helicopter in the mountains of Australia. They are going to parachute off really big, high cliffs. Unfortunately, the first one to jump doesn't pull his chute on time and suffers a terrible fall. Incredibly, he survives the fall - which doesn't seem physically possible, considering the extent of his puncture wound. Things get worse for Olympic champion Apolo Ohno (appropriately named Stone) because his sky-dive releases the titular "Tasmanian Devils". Naturally, the animated monsters want to kill everyone in camera sight.

The movie's greatest visual is park ranger Danica McKellar (as Alex). She is presented in a tight uniform that accentuates her prominent front...

One interesting little moment in Brook Durham's script occurs when Ms. McKellar notes her character has a man's name ("Alex") while leading man Kenneth Mitchell plays the male character "Jayne" - spelled just like a girl. This starts out like it might be an interesting relationship, but it's really ordinary. The couple does get good interesting support from Mike Dopud (as Anderson) and a trio of food suppliers for the Tasmanian devils. The creatures are not very scary or believable, but the effects team makes up for it with some well-stage gore scenes.

**** Tasmanian Devils (1/19/13) Zach Lipovsky ~ Danica McKellar, Kenneth Mitchell, Mike Dopud, Terry Chen

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.