I am torn on this movie. There was a lot I enjoyed, but it was terribly edited and nonsensical with no clear rules of the world established.
I’m not sure if I enjoyed it enough for it to be a guilty pleasure, I was entertained but I just left the movie scratching my head. I see a lot of potential in it but everything seems half baked. The movie starts in a middle, instead of a beginning. Hard to explain all the things I think are wrong with this movie so I will instead say how I’d of done the movie.
Start with a dream that isn’t a bunch of nonsense that gives off a tone and defines the world of these monsters. Maybe make it dreamlike with a guide taking the guy and explaining things because this movie was severely lacking exposition.
Then have him go to the therapist, and don’t telegraph it so much that he is clearly a psychopath and the actual killer, it just kills any tension and makes every scene with him a chore like “WE GET IT ALREADY HE’S THE SERIAL KILLER”.
Cut the cast of humans in half, so many of them were exactly the same and none were used to any effect, for instance the black detective served no purpose at all and was just killed boringly. They could of had him suspect the therapist or be duped by the therapist and then betrayed, either way lends itself to compelling scenes, unlike what we got of “hey look at this” moseys over and gets stabbed.
Explain these creatures and work their strengths and weakness’ into the story, the only one they did that with was the smoke mom. These creatures had no rhyme or reason, nor do they explain the rules on how a dead human becomes one and what decided their appearance. Make them intimidating and a force to be reckoned with for gods sakes, even the berserkers did nothing more that knock people out. This movie should of been gory, heads should of been ripped off, and it should of reveled in the violence on both sides, instead everything felt so toned down.
Have some spacial awareness, it bothered me so much that most the graveyard was matte paintings. it made shots really not fit together coherently almost as badly as a Transformers movie. How hard is it to have a decent graveyard set, the underground set was pretty good so they had the talent… was it a budget reason, if that was the case they could of cut out some of the pointless scenes like the therapist interrogating the hermit taxidermist guy that really didn’t move the story forward at all and included the therapist teleporting (which happened multiple times in the movie such as the woman behind the counter)
Give the hero something worthwhile to do, he is the chosen one to go there and tell them to run away… worst chosen one ever. If he rallied them and prepared them for a fight like you see in many movies it might of been cliche, but at least it would be something.
Also if you are going to have the final conflict be between an immortal knife impervious hero, explain why he is suddenly weakened enough to get his ass kicked by a human that doesn’t look to be more than 140lbs…
Also if you are going to try to cliffhang a sequel maybe establish some motivation for the priest to want to murder them all, especially after he becomes one of them, that made zero sense at all.
… It may sound like I hate this movie, I don’t. I don’t know if I like it, but I was at least entertained. It just has such a good premise and even with the directors cut I watched was a jumbled mess of half formed ideas that went nowhere. Decent acting, some amazing and some middling effects (strangely inconsistent in quality between each monster, some looked amazing and some looked like some cheap halloween makeup).
Scare score 1.5/10 (though I don’t think this really is a horror movie so it wasn’t trying to scare)
movie score 4/10 or 6/10 (think this is one I will just have to look back on in a year and see how I feel about it).