Wow... okay. Where to begin? I'll start with the good: it is imaginative and they had a fairly good idea. The concept of a world-wide group of witches working with demons for human trafficking is a great premise for a movie.
Too bad the writing, acting, special effects, and editing make student films from the Buckeye School of Film and Proctology look like Dr. Zhivago.
The plot is incoherent throughout with characters introduced and then eliminated without explanation. We have a vague idea of who they are supposed to be but almost no idea why they are there. The two leads try desperately to put on a good show; however, their lines are so wooden Olivier couldn't make them work.
Other than the two leads, the acting is strictly amateur hour. One horrible idea was having a minor female character introduced around a half hour in who looks like a slightly older version of the female lead who is introduced later. This caused me to believe I was seeing the same actress suddenly return from the dead - would it have killed you guys to, I don't know, change somebody's freaking hair color along the way?
And, then there are the effects. Blood and gore, not so bad but the masks look like something from Spirit Halloween's bargain table.
Finally, this thing was stitched together worse than a 70s grindhouse flick. We need to see a logical flow of understanding by the characters as the plot is revealed. Instead, we have what appear to be jumps between "I don't know what is going on" to "I know how to handle this". The ChaoFeng mob scenes are hideously overacted and do nothing for the overall plot.
Bad as it was, I want to close with this: I watched the entire film. Why? Because the concept was fresh. With about another year of pre-production and script re-writes? This might have been a very good movie. I'll be looking for more films by the director in the future. I view this as more of a student film than a finished work. And, I'll bet we'll see better from them in the future.
Too bad the writing, acting, special effects, and editing make student films from the Buckeye School of Film and Proctology look like Dr. Zhivago.
The plot is incoherent throughout with characters introduced and then eliminated without explanation. We have a vague idea of who they are supposed to be but almost no idea why they are there. The two leads try desperately to put on a good show; however, their lines are so wooden Olivier couldn't make them work.
Other than the two leads, the acting is strictly amateur hour. One horrible idea was having a minor female character introduced around a half hour in who looks like a slightly older version of the female lead who is introduced later. This caused me to believe I was seeing the same actress suddenly return from the dead - would it have killed you guys to, I don't know, change somebody's freaking hair color along the way?
And, then there are the effects. Blood and gore, not so bad but the masks look like something from Spirit Halloween's bargain table.
Finally, this thing was stitched together worse than a 70s grindhouse flick. We need to see a logical flow of understanding by the characters as the plot is revealed. Instead, we have what appear to be jumps between "I don't know what is going on" to "I know how to handle this". The ChaoFeng mob scenes are hideously overacted and do nothing for the overall plot.
Bad as it was, I want to close with this: I watched the entire film. Why? Because the concept was fresh. With about another year of pre-production and script re-writes? This might have been a very good movie. I'll be looking for more films by the director in the future. I view this as more of a student film than a finished work. And, I'll bet we'll see better from them in the future.