The Bog Creatures

Selected by the world's most over-acted expert on "Irish bogs located somewhere in the Central U.S.", a group of college kids go to dig in a field somewhere in Arkansas, I mean, Ireland. Or maybe it was Norway. Or Sweden. Hell, it doesn't really matter because there isn't a bog within 300 miles of this movie. Unless I'm confused on my history and bog actually means "small dirt field with a few pine trees and some poorly hung fake moss."

Rumor has it that Viking warriors were buried in this bog and the expert professor has spent the last 10 years looking for their bodies. All of his colleagues think he is crazy for believing this.

Well not only is he crazy, he's also blind as a bat because these Nordic Zombie Warriors are all over the freakin' place. Seriously. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting an undead Berserker in the wee bits. In any outdoor scene you can be guaranteed there is at loeast one bog creature hanging out in the background. And our EXPERT can't spot one in 10 years?

Blah blah blah, terrible acting, 1200 year old undead Irish virgins who comprehend Modern English, witch descendants, THE END.

I saw this movie yesterday on a public service channel. They had advertised it as an awful movie, and so I was drawn to see it, and I was not let down.

A group of 18-19 year old go to an excavation site at an old viking castle in Denmark, to try to uncover the myth of the Berserker vikings. Strange things happens: something is in the forest, and people start disappearing.

The main thing about this movie that really bothers me, is that the story is supposed to take place in Denmark, where I happen to live. There were so many places in the movie where the Hollywood-style overlapped danish reality. It really made the acting and drama look ridiculous in my eyes.

You never see the characters interact with any of their surroundings. Its feels like a mini-Hollywood in Denmark, and it takes away the credibility of the movie. When at one point you hear someone speak "old danish", it sounds exactly like modern day Swedish. Really bad research, considering the director is from Denmark.

The characters in the movie used GPS and maps, and that's really funny, since Denmark is about the size of your backyard. Nomatter where you are, there is never more than 50 km to the sea, and 500 meters to civilization. And if you are at a castle, there are going to be tourists everywhere. We see a lot of overviews of forests in the movie, and sometimes, we see what appears to be North American vegetation(?) The story did not exactly appeal to me, maybe because the acting was so bad. When the characters see the bog creatures for the first time, they are not even scared. I guess their acting skills were insufficient to display realistic emotions. At the end, there is an unexpected twist, but it didn't impress me, since I didn't really care.

The bog creatures are cheap, but they had the potential to be scary. Unfortunately, they fail, since we get a good look at them standing in the forest when the characters arrive at the castle. Also, there are no really scary scenes, since the Bog Creatures are mostly just standing around.

Anyway, conclusion: Disregarding the facts, the movie is your typical B-horror flick. I guess people from other countries can enjoy it more. As long as you are unaware of reality, it doesn't matter. Just like I think of USA as one big action movie set, everyone else can think of Denmark as a forest with a castle.. and some living-dead people in a bog..

Five American archeological students are invited to Denmark by a disreputable anthropologist to dig up the remains of a berserker clan of Vikings in bog near a castle. Things go awry when the bodies amazingly come to life.

"The Bog Creatures" (2003) is a low-budget creature feature costing around $75,000 (I'm guesstimating based on the cost of another one of the small studio's productions from that time period). For such a miniscule budget, the story is rather ambitious and there's some welcome droll humor amidst the life-or-death goings-on. The female cast is okay, but not exceptional, including Leia Thompson (Diana), Courtney Henggeler (Suzie) and Debbie Rochon (Tara).

While I'm giving this a relatively low rating due to the story bogging down after the first half hour and some lame writing here or there, it's watchable if you don't mind really low-budget fare. There's a nice twist in the last act that I didn't see coming.

It runs 1 hour, 22 minutes, and was shot in Bovina, New York, which is a 1.5-hour drive southeast of Albany and a 1-hour drive northwest of Woodstock.

GRADE: C-

Ho, ho, ho - the name itself screams at you from the video store - 'rent me, rent me' - or maybe that's just me? If only the film itself screamed 'watch me' or at least 'enjoy me in a camp kinda way'...it doesn't really - but hey I've seen worse.

Fans of generic fun will have a fun time with "The Bog Creatures" and self-righteous "film connoisseurs" will be offended. I'm a little of both, so I just may be a good source...

It starts out with a hopelessly low-budget medieval battle (My dear friend/generic film buff, who rented this one, noticed a "knight" wearing a striped T-shirt!). The lazy filmmakers pay no attention to detail and don't even attempt authenticity. The low-grade DV cinematography doesn't help, either. Fortunately, the movie slips into some campy fun as the real story starts. Five bright and good-natured college flunkies (??) assist an ex-college flunkie in doing some excavation work in a Scottish bog (although it looks more like American woodlands). Nearby is an ancient castle in which mysterious events are tied to. The "ancient" castle has wooden walls, wooden-hinge doors and a brand spanking new paint job, but oh-well what can you do with lazy filmmakers. Suddenly, shamefully under-costumed bog creatures (wearing untainted shirts and khaki pants) turn the bog into their happy hunting ground. The typically formulaic story is surprisingly grounded, and never descends to an unwatchable bomb level. Director J. Christian Ingvordsen seems to know what goes into a pleasant, crowd pleasing horror flick, but he doesn't seem to have the means to achieve his goal. The screenplay, written by Matthew M. Howe is plain and simple rubbish, but it could have been cool rubbish had there been directed with a bigger budget.

There are fine women to be found, and not much of anything else. This is a pretty bad one, but I guess it could have been a lot worse. If your looking for a decisive recommendation or the opposite, I'd advise passing this one for sure (unless you are interested in seeing a man devour a woman's panties whole in one of the most absurd, if highly memorable, scenes).