Have made no secret in the past of intensely disliking, and even outright hating a lot, a vast majority of The Asylum's (near-universally maligned for good reason) output, though there is curiosity as to whether they are capable of making something good and compulsive about their output's badness. Admittedly, The Asylum do have a small group of watchable films and the occasional (big emphasis on that word) above average one, unfortunately outweighed by the lacklustre at best and often dreadful films they churn out.
'Tomb Invader' is not one of The Asylum's all time worst, they've definitely done worse that have been more amateurish and insulted the intelligence more. With that being said, even when taking it for what it was, and from watching other films from The Asylum it is abundantly clear it shouldn't be taken seriously, it was a very poorly executed film, compensated only by the lead performances being reasonably competent. 'Tomb Invader' believe it or not is not a blatant rip off of 'Tomb Raider', instead it was made to capitalise on that film's release.
Regardless of what people's stance is on 'Tomb Raider', despite the critical reception being fairly lukewarm, those who hated it will find themselves appreciating it after watching 'Tomb Invader'. 'Tomb Raider' was not a perfect film, far from it, and was not exactly great, but count me in as somebody who found it a quite entertaining watch.
Visually, 'Tomb Invader' looks incredibly cheap even for something made on a low budget. It's very drably and sometimes dizzyingly shot, incoherently edited (bacon-slicer-like) with glaring and unforgivably sloppy continuity errors and even the scenery doesn't make much impression despite being actually the least bad aspect of the film. There are worse special effects in other Asylum films, they still look very cheap though and like they were an afterthought and made in haste. Am aware of the film being low-budget, but there are examples of low-budget films that still don't look awful and manage to be pretty good.
Can remember little about the music, which tended to be intrusive, annoying and out of place. The script makes little sense, sounds awkward constantly and on the wrong side of camp throughout.
There is absolutely nothing thrilling, tense, suspenseful, emotionally investable or fun about the story. The predictability may have been forgivable if the film was actually engaging let alone exciting but it fails to be either throughout. 'Tomb Invader' is basically non-stop dullness, and intelligence-insulting ridiculousness, with unintentional humour because of the excessive cheese, numerous illogical moments, bouts of mawkish drama (couldn't get behind the whole derivative and over-sentimental mother gone missing stuff) and irritating character behaviours that makes one endear to them even less in a film with not one interesting or rootable character.
Although there are worse-acted The Asylum films, the acting generally is not good at all. Actually the leads are not bad, and the reason why 'Tomb Invader' hasn't been rated a 1, particularly Gina Vitori. The supporting cast however all round are shambolic, with lots of over-compensating and an equal amount of sleepwalking, and one of the film's biggest failures. The direction is not worth mentioning, due to being a large part of the film's failure.
Overall, very poor and far from badass. 2/10 Bethany Cox
