Disappointed By "BABYLON A.D."

Having loved Vin Diesal in PITCH BLACK and it’s sequel THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK I had high hopes for the futuristic post-apocalyptic film BABYLON A.D. but the film missed the mark completely. This film starts off well enough with it being in the future and the world is held together by the propaganda of the High Priestess (Charlotte Rampling). Vin Diesal plays Toorop, a mercenary whom we learn very quickly lives by a strict code of honor in whatever job he takes next.

He is soon hired by an underground low-life Gorsky (Gerard Depardieu) to escort a woman into America, a country whose borders are on lock down and they only allow a certain “breed” to enter of which he does not belong yet he strives to return. He is joined on this journey by Sister Rebeka (Michelle Yeoh) who is ward to his package Aurora (Melanie Thierry), who harbors a dark secret that puts all of there lives in danger. Aurora has spent her entire life in a monastery and thus knows nothing of the outside world in which they are to embark. As they try to make their way into America they are pursued by a group of anarchist who claim to be sent by Aurora’s dead father.

The film starts off okay as an futuristic action film (when the action does in fact come) but the film suffers from trying to be a complex story about the impending future of humanity and its reliance of the image of a religious deity to hold power over it. The film becomes really complicated in its last twenty minutes and it falls apart real quickly as if the film is trying to be the first part in a series of films (ala THE GOLDEN COMPASS), but instead the film falls flat on its face.

The other bad thing about the film is the unoriginality of the action and fight choreography which makes the film seem like something you’ve already seen better in some other film. This is a surprise coming from director Mathieu Kassavitz who did such a great job on THE CRIMSON RIVERS or even GOTHIKA. It also seems like Diesal is somewhere else as his Toorop resembles Riddick just a tad too much and not in the good way. Although its always good to see Yeoh in American films, like her other film this year THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR, she has even less to do in this film then in that one. The film just has too many shortcomings for me to overlook.

After Dark Films Presents TOOTH & NAIL

As part of the 2007 After Dark Horror Fest I can forgive the pitfalls of this post-apocalyptic tail TOOTH & NAIL for all its short comings. Written & directed by Mark Young (and almost exclusively in one location) TOOTH & NAIL tells the story of a world in which the absence of oil and gasoline has caused the world to become plunged into total chaos. In the film, a idealistic man Darwin (played by an exceptionally well casted Robert Carradine) has banded together a group of survivors who have refused to move south like the rest of the population but have instead taken a large hospital as there new paradise from which to rebuild society for a new age.

There world is torn apart when they decide to rescue a woman from being abducted but cannibal survivors and who subsequently follow them back to their paradise. From then one, each night the survivors within the hospital are preyed upon by the cannibals who only kill one of them each night in order to prolong their food supply. As the number of survivors in the hospital dwindle each night they must decide what to do in order to survive or escape the cannibals into the unknown outside world.

TOOTH & NAIL is an interesting concept that doesn’t go the distance when it comes to the execution. This is mainly because they have Michael Madsen and Vinnie Jones as two of the main cannibals who do absolutely nothing for the film. The film could’ve worked better without the “star” names attached and if it had stayed closed with the characters within the hospital and made it a tense and disturbing psychological horror film similar to that of HIGH TENSION or THE HILLS HAVE EYES (either version), in which we know little about the killers but instead stay with the characters plight.

As directed by Young, the film has no cinematic flare or style which is needed in a film that takes place all within one location. It’s a lamentable attempt at best but it suffers because of its predictability and pedestrian treatment of the script. Carradine does a great job in his limited role but so does supporting actors Nicole DuPort, Rider Strong (much better here then in his other After Dark Film BORDERLAND), and Rachel Miner, while all the other characters are simply throw away characters in which you don’t really care when they die.

Although the death scenes are plentiful (mostly towards the end) they are practically goreless and sub-par for most horror fans of these types of films. TOOTH & NAIL is just a simple film that chooses not to go the distance, which is a shame because it could have been so much better.