Soldiers of the Damned

Watching this movie is like being forced to watch the amateur project your friends who are into reenactment made during a weekend in the wild: you're mildly curious but mostly very bored and slightly suspicious of the guy who plays the SS, why is his character going for the madman route?

Whilst watching this very odd horror movie (taking place on the Eastern Front), I was already pondering the rating. At one stage it was 8 and another stage it went down to a lowly 2 (out of !0). For once i can understand both a terrible response and loving it, reaction. There are so many positives but an equal amount of negatives to. For a start they should have swapped the English actors for authentic German ones and two thirds of the selected, should seriously go back to acting school (In parts it was pretty dire). On the plus side the story (of searching for a supernatural, super race) was involving and interesting (kind of believable to) and there was some exciting, violent battle action. For once I'm baffled on how to rate it, which I guess is a good sign. On a whim just settled on a 6.

If someone were to ask me what Soldiers of the Damned is about all I could think to say is "damned if I know".

Lets start off by saying the acting is good, the sets are good, the general premise of this film is good. Where this B grade film falls down very badly is in the storyline department.

I had assumed as the film progressed the threads would be drawn together and we would gain some insight into the inexplicable events that take place. This however, is not the case. The result for the unfortunate viewer is one of those "what the...." moments. As in, what the hell did I just waste my time watching?

This is an incoherent, borderline silly film. Its watchable but the lack anything like a finale/conclusion is a substantial shortcoming. Four out of ten from me.

1944, Romania. A group of German soldiers is tasked with taking a scientist into a forest that is believed to be haunted.

This movie started well, as a decent war movie. Good action scenes, with a decent degree of accuracy and grittiness. However, over time the movie degenerates from a war movie into a horror movie and becomes at best mediocre. Quite silly towards the end.

A pity. If they had left it as a conventional war movie it could have been pretty good.

On the surface, the movie seems like a youtube quality fan film made by a group of friends with a good idea. The effect is hilariously bad and ruin the tense atmosphere that the movie desperately tried to build. The pacing is either too slow at the beginning or too fast toward the end once the mystery is unraveled. The story leaves much to be desired since there are plot point that are out of place or completely useless (i.e. the romantic scene). There is an excess of character that are so lack in distinguishing features and personality which made it hard to remember who is who and who mattered. But among the horribly written cast of characters, a few stood out, and that was the reason why I watched the movie for its entirety.

Praises must be given to the actors since they really delivered a strong performance however stereotypical. For example, the stereotypical image of a Nazi commander is of a proud and cold monster in a man skin, with distinctive gestures, head movements, and a almost believable german accent (which is one thing I can appreciate since the everyone have a british accent).

Would I recommend the movie? Absolutely not. However, there is a good chance that if one stumbled across this movie, they might be able to enjoy it at their own leisure.