Demigod

Wrote this review 60 minutes into the movie. I couldn't make it through the whole thing.

This movie is not my preferred brand of horror, hence the low rating. It seems like Nordic Folk Horror based on the look and foreign language use in the film.

I found it boring and very slow. You finally get a glimpse of what's going on around 40 minutes into the film, and at this point I was pretty disappointed that it turned out to be a story that's been told a million times before and is in no way novel or scary.

The movie also has a few gory parts, which again is not my preferred kind of horror. It's just gross, not scary. There's also several scenes in the movie that would have been much more intense and creepy if it had been filmed at night instead of before dusk. Overall just felt kind of cheesy to me.

If you like movies about old folklore gods and movies that move super slowly, you may enjoy this film.

No pun intended - also no child of mine of course. Well you may ask yourself, where you may have heard that or if that plays any role in this movie ... probably better not to go down that road. Or back to the village you are from - wait that was advice for the main characters in this movie. Not that they would listen anyway ... but what horror movie character does? You wouldn't have a movie if they did.

The mixture between languages is not helping - and it is not about the subtitles .. it is about the acting ... well let's call them "abilities" some of the people here display. Do not hold it against the movie if you can.

Story is not really that .. exciting either. But if you have a soft spot for horror movies ... well you are getting some nice setup and cinematography ... plus some violence and blood effects that are not that bad ... you decide if that is enough for you.

I don't want slag on this film too much since it was clearly made on the cheap and in earnest, but it's full of needless, wobbly German dialog, and it's just such a puzzling decision. Most of actors obviously don't speak German; the writers don't speak German at the level you need to write a film. Why is half the film in German? Yeah, a couple of the actors sound at least fluent, but they're certainly not native, and the constantly shifting fake German accents when they (almost randomly) speak English are just bad. There's even a point in the film where the supernatural baddies explain that they speak all languages, so one is prompted to wonder why they decided 2nd year college German with subtitles was the one to go with.

I could also grumble about this sophomoric understanding of Cernunnos and pagan worship in general. I'm not sure the writers get the basic concept of blood sacrifice (or what the word "demigod" means), but in the tradition of plot motivations for horror films, it's hardly the worst offender. Unfortunately, it kinda misses on the whole horror thing too. And some of the dialog: "The panther and the sheep never hunt together."?

There's some decent acting and some sorta decent production (again, I give them points for at least trying), but for the most part, it seems like a somewhat long student film that by some miracle ended up on Amazon Prime.

Almost shut this one off because I thought it was going to be foreign language but it is not. Then I had to do a double take because the lead male sounds way too much like Denzel Washington. And wow I love the hand-cannon weapon they show off at the start.

We have the woods, we have bloody carcasses, and plenty of vomiting at the start! Then the thing gets pretty boring. Some bad overacting. Cruddy script.

Then we get a bunch of running around, and the 'god' chasing around specific people to be one of its three main worshippers. Oh my. It's really pretty bad.

If you want to see a fun romp thru the woods with the god Cernunos, I recommend The Ritual.

This one however., 2/10.

We were fooled into thinking this movie was worthy of the 6.3 rating it had when we discovered it, but clearly this is not an honest reflection of the film, because this is one TERRIBLE movie. Unbelievably boring and slow. The acting wasn't too terrible (though the one-eyed witch was pretty awful, everyone else was merely mediocre), and the story could have been a decent one, but instead they ruined what could have been a suspenseful ancient tale. In addition, pretty much every scene had the characters do at least one incredibly stupid thing. Eye-rolling level stupid things. The music track was entirely inappropriate - slow and melodic instead of anything that built up some kind of suspense, and it would have fit better over a 1970's romance film. If you care about how you spend the next couple of hours, move on from this fake-review-fest and find something worth your time.