Await the Dawn

Kept me pretty well glued to the TV screen. Scientist's daughter wreaks havoc and lust for terror is not entirely new, but with nice twists and well filmed.

If it's your type of horror (blood and guts} you are in for a treat.

First, let me just say that I love horror movies. Await the dawn had a very interesting concept. I did enjoy it, but not because of what was going on but because of the little girls acting. I believe everyone else is acting was horrible! But the little girl was amazing! She did such a great job! After the little girl, the mother was next. She also was really good. Not great but good. I would recommend this movie. It is a hit or miss. I do not believe this movie will be a waste of your time. I do not recommend this movie for little kids. One of the good things is that the movie is not too long. It's an hour and a half. Any longer I believe it would have gotten less stars.

Having said that if you take it tongue in cheek and just accept the fact it is a low budget horror movie then you will find it a passable Friday nights viewing with a few mates, a few beers and a few laughs as the story is as mad as the directors name.

I think the director should seriously consider shortening his name as it is quite pretentious; he even puts his name on one of the gravestones at the end of the movie, cmon for real? Maysonet? Macho? The name is almost as laughable as some of the acting.

The story is bizarre but the acting contrary to other the usual (1 or 10 star) reviewers who clearly don't know what good acting is as well as properly rating a movie on Imdb, is on the whole rather good with Dee Wallace stealing the show; she always puts in a top performance whatever role she takes on but does she really need the money that much to star in these low budgeters. Her acting is so much better than any of the other cast members she seems so much more out of place in this. It also features the magnificently over the top Vernon Wells who many may remember as the standout bad guy in the original Mad Max movie and although all the performances are adequate, Hannah Strasser who plays the demon from another dimension makes the entire film fall as flat as a pancake that has been steamrollered into oblivion as she just cannot act with a wooden and totally inappropriate performance.

To be fair the CGI and gore is quite well done but the film just seems to be designed around the gore and effects rather than having a flowing narrative but the one thing that makes the whole thing look silly is the interdimensional wormhole generator - It is actually an inverted Magic Devil food blender (I kid you not, I actually have one!) with some led lights flashing and modelling clay made me laugh until I literally soiled myself!

It is low budget so should be reviewed as such and to be fair it beats a lot of the utter guff I have seen recently on Netflix and if you go into it with a few beers or other brain dulling soporific, you might just find it a bit of a laugh, although I am not 100% sure this is what Pablo the magnificent...IV had in mind - who knows but its a slightly below average 4/10 on the hatchets scale for me!

The gore was funny for the most part. There just wasn't enough story. And there certainly wasn't any good dialogue. Most of the movie was just cheese. Can't give it anymore than a 3/10.

...and it was very unloved and abused and mistreated and cast off a cliff like a malformed Spartan baby.

This isn't a good movie. The acting is awful (though Dee Wallace did seem to take it serious, thus put in effort), which goes right in hand with the terrible script. The "interior" of the RV is such a bad set and obviously not the same as the vehicle in the exterior shots. Family melodrama keeps trying to take over from the horror and monsters, but in such a cliched trope of a melodrama. Every time one of the possessed/zombies/mind controlled popped up, I waited for them to say "Dead by dawn. We'll swallow you're soul."

Also, had no one involved in this movie ever seen a heroin addict? I'm sorry, "drug" addict...because being specific about substances would have involved knowing anything about anything.

I did like the creature and blood effects (in a B-flick way). There's even an extra star floating around for that, but you need to activate your pineal gland to see it. And I DID get a tiny smirk out of a monster flick having Drs. Cronen and Berg...because, Cronenberg, get it? Thankfully, the "writer"/"director" spared us the insult of actually pointing it out.

What we WEREN'T spared was the bludgeoning of a character named Howard Philips who worked for Miskatonic Labs. The movie was already based on From Beyond (movie or story, take your pick), so it would have been more appropriate to have him be Crawford Tillinghast. Then the people who know would know, and anyone else would just think it was a strange name in the modern era. But noooooooooooooooo.....couldn't let it slip past the viewers that this is a Lovecraftian horror. Just cram the old H. P. down everyone's throats and pretend you're clever.

And as bad as most of the movie was, the ending was three times as bad. It plodded along being a rip-off that even SyFy wouldn't produce, then took a sharp left turn into horrendous and stupid.

Watch this if you want to see how bad it truly is, but it really is better off never wasting your time. I don't think it could even be a good drinking game with the friends kinda movie.