Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

What the heck was this? My friends, I have seen some confusing and convoluted movies before but this one here, ‘Opapatika’ or ‘Demon Warriors’ as it is known on this side of the pond, could be the most confusing of them all. But by the time this movie came to its conclusion, mercifully in some sense, a more disturbing thought to ponder was that about 50% of it was starting to make sense to me.

Alrighty then, let’s see what we can do with this little ditty out Thailand. Apparently on our planet earth there are humans, that would be us, and there are opapatika’s. These opapatika’s are demons who have a special power and if I’m not mistaken there are good opapatika’s and evil opapatika’s, just like there are good and bad humans. As our film opens we meet the character of Taesit played by an actor named Leo Putt. This has nothing to do with anything but Leo Putt looks exactly like one of my best friends from high school Pat Victorio. It was scary looking at this dude. Anyway, Taesit wants to be an opapatika for some reason or another and has consulted the old demon Sadok on making this happen. We should mention that this story is being narrated by the character of Thuwachit (Pongpat Wachirabunjong) who is a human hunting opapatika’s for his opapatika boss Sadok. He mentions that the reason that Taesit wants to be an opapatika is ‘nonsense’ and if this cat says that word in this movie, then it must truly be nonsense and thus they never fill us in on his reasons.

Next thing you know Taesit puts a bullet in own his head and THEN this old dude starts informing my man of the laundry list of bad things that come along with trying to be an opapatika. Great info I would’ve loved to have had at my disposal before I shot myself. So Taesit has the gift of mind reading and intuition, but the more he uses this gift, he begins to lose one of his five senses. The odd thing about this is by the end of the movie Taesit will become a blind deaf mute without the ability to taste or smell, but still seems to get around pretty well and losing all of his senses hasn’t affected his ability to handle the steel one little bit. Plus I thought speech was an ability and not a sense, but what the hell do I know. Regardless, now Taesit has to help Sadok and Tuchawit hunt these other four opapatika’s with varying talents, with us having little idea why he’s doing this. One of these demons is immortal, another is a hired assassin who has mastered the ‘death spot’, another has a shadow demon he can summon and the last becomes a lightning fast animalistic death machine when the sun sets. There is also this somber woman floating around playing lame tunes on the piano who has enchanted our opapatika’s and whose presence is incredibly confusing, but it will be come clearer, at least a little bit.

Eventually we will discover why Sadok needs these opapatika’s and eventually some of the other things in this movie will start to make a little bit of sense, but certainly not everything, at least not to me. So in the absence of comprehension just sit back and watch the blood flow.

One thing we can say about this movie ‘Demon Warriors’ is that I’m almost positive that more folks got murdered in this movie than any movie ever. I’m trying to think back and while there might some disaster movies in which boats have sunk, planes have crashed and planets have been exploded that might’ve had more deaths, none of those had the up close and personal number of deaths delivered by the characters in this flick. Dozens upon dozens up dozens of faceless soldiers get shot, dismembered beheaded, gored up, blowed up, run over, gutted, throat slit, eye gouged… and on it goes.

But its not nonstop bloodletting my friends because that would get boring now wouldn’t it? Director Thanakorn Pongsuwan often disrupts the mindless carnage that is his film to bless us with mindless periods of deep thought and reflection where our characters speak in virtual riddles about things and events and other pearls of wisdom in which I had no clue what the hell they were talking about. But then there goes thirty or so faceless soldiers getting their throats slit by a blur.

But like I said before, as the movie goes on it and makes its way to its conclusion, eventually you do get some sense as to what is going on around us. You aren’t going to get this while watching most of the movie, no sir, and of course this might incur one to let this movie go, but if you stick with it, the incredibly convoluted nature of ‘Demon Warriors’ does start to work itself out a little bit.

It’s too bad this movie ended up being as scattered brained as it turned out to be because the base elements were completely bad-ass, and while the violence of the movie ended up being way too much, leading to the viewer becoming desensitized to the pure amount of it, there were some well shot and very well realized action sequences in this film. If only the filmmakers could’ve been a tad bit less ambitious with this overreaching narrative which makes up this movie because ‘Demon Warriors’ had the real potential to be in the category of an all-time popcorn classic.