Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

I’ve seen quite a few absolutely terrible flicks in which Sean’s baby boy Jason Connery has made an appearance which isn’t all that surprising since Jason pretty much works where I eat. Ah but I see my man Jason is the ambitious type and apparently sick and tired of being in front of the camera in crap movies, for this one ‘The Devil’s Tomb’ he slides in behind the camera into the director’s chair. After sitting down and watching ‘The Devil’s Tomb’ we gotta say it does have some issues but one of those issues doesn’t seem to be the direction, at least for the most part. Of course I’m comparing this final product to stuff such as ‘Lightspeed’ and ‘Brotherhood of Blood’ to which ‘The Devil’s Tomb’ is ‘The Godfather’ when compared to those rather suspect cinematic events, but nonetheless this does lead me to believe that Mr. Connery just might have a future as a low budget film director.

The new king of our cherished Straight to DVD genre Cuba Gooding Jr., step aside Wesley, Steve and Jean Claude, is super tough badass Special Forces soldier Captain Mack. You got a tough job that needs its ass kicked? Then Captain Mack and his crew is who you need to call. This particular gig seems easy enough on the surface which includes our crew heading to Afghanistan or somewhere thereabouts, bust into an underground facility and retrieve Dr. Wesley (Ron Perlman), the father of Dr. Elissa (Valerie Cruz) who has organized this little rescue mission.

Our crew consists of a rather culturally diverse group of individuals such as hot Asian chick and all around badass Yoshi (Stephanie Chaves-Jacobson), muscle bound Hispanic cat and all around badass Hammer (Frankie G) and heroic white dude and all around badass Hicks (Jason London) who is also squeezing Yoshi on the side. We also have wise cracking dude and communications guru Nickels (Zack Ward), skittish Black dude and master hacker Click (Brandon Fobbs) who also looks like he will be our ‘WE ALL GONNA DIE’ guy in this movie and finally we have the character called Doc (Taryn Manning) who seems far too young and skankalicious to be anybody’s doctor. She seems to have a Sapphic thing for the crazy hot Yoshi as well.

Right of the bat we know something is up with the mission as our crew immediately runs into a priest covered in boils speaking in tongues. Not cool. Further investigation will reveal a zombie looking dude who has intimate knowledge of our crew, loves to blaspheme and spits acid. Now as un-cool as that sounds what is even way more un-cool is if you shoot this dude in the head he wriggles around a bit, gets right back up and starts blaspheming some more. Not cool.

Now Captain Mack is bit upset with Dr. Elissa because somehow she left out the section on Devil Possessed Zombies who spit acid in the mission dossier. By the time the crew run into a nutty priest played by Henry Rollins, who ended up being our true ‘ WE ALL GONNA DIE’ guy in this movie, Mack knows it time to get the hell out here. Too late baby because what’s going on down here is bigger than the both of us and you got a front row seat. Can you say ‘apocalypse’?

The bottom line is that I enjoyed watching ‘The Devil’s Tomb’ as it had enough action, gore, horror elements and even a little completely gratuitous nudity to keep me from wishing I was doing something else. As a director Jason Connery seems to know what he’s doing as the scenes flowed together well, the pacing was adequate and the atmosphere was rather tight. These are all good things which do make the movie quite watchable but there are road blocks which prevent us actually calling ‘The Devil’s Tomb’ a ‘good’ movie. The longer it goes on the less sense the film makes and our character do dumber and dumber things that only people in horror movies would do. I mean I like a naked woman as much as the next guy but if I’m on a mission in an underground bunker with a boil infested priest nearby and I see a naked woman motioning to me, even if she has a body as insanely perfect as the one the actress had in this movie, I’m thinking I’m not going to start making out with her. But then that’s just me. Call me a bitch. I also don’t know if I’d follow around my whispering aborted child to parts unknown because, well, it’s aborted and thus shouldn’t be speaking. These things only get worse but the most confusing part is figuring out what exactly is supposed to be going on. It’s pretty clear that The Evil wants to be free to do its evil thing but why does The Evil need our soldiers to do this? Just go on up and be free Mr. Evil, damn. By the time the credits roll this odd mixture of biblical references, mythology and George Romero makes practically no sense but at least we got see a little lesbian girl on devil possessed zombie girl scene filled with some puss filled boil sucking action. You don’t see that every day. Veteran actor Ray Winstone also makes a cameo in a rather odd flashback scene which at least does have some relevance to the plot. Barely. And we must send a special shout out to actress Chene Lawson who has all of thirty seconds of screen time as Cuba’s wife for no other reason than the woman is hot as hell. Call me. Unless my wife picks up then hang up quick.

If anything it seems that ‘The Devil’s Tomb’ might’ve been just a bit too ambitious in design which probably led to the confusing plot elements and silly character behaviors, but it was well acted, at no time did it bore me and it was tightly produced. For his first time in the chair Jason Connery did not totally disappoint.