Dawn of the Beast

I liked it, which I thought I wouldn't but glad I kept watching. Well worth the watch.

In summary, a group of older students go on a field trip in search of Big Foot. Sounds straight forward enough but Dawn of the Beast is a very busy movie. There are monsters, cannibals, zombies, terrified students and, several sub-plots including a romance of sorts and an abduction. Oh, and there might or might be a vampire / zombie as well. The character in question certainly exhibits some vampire like traits.

It's a B movie which gets cracking almost from-the-get-go. Once it would have made great drive-in material though it's gore quotient would have made it a stand-out. It's not especially gory by todays standards but it certainly is compared to the days when William Castle ruled the world of window mounted speakers.

It is no great secret, but the film is dripping with Wendigos. Being Australian, I had to look them up. I discovered there is a psychosis called Wendigo psychosis. It is a fear of developing a lust for human flesh or becoming a cannibal. It pretty much sums up the film - fear, experienced by the cast if not always the viewer, cannibalism and, a smattering of gore.

In the end it comes down to a battle between monsters, but an awful lot of stupid decisions are made by the cast of characters before, and after, this. It is difficult to pick a stand-out among the cast. All are adequate, none are particularly brilliant. Perhaps they weren't expected to be. In these days of gender equity, it is nice to see a scream queen and a scream king in competition.

The real stand out is Jared Balog who is responsible for some of the monsters' make-up and I'm guessing the gore and entrails.

Production values are OK. (I suspect there wasn't a huge budget.) Anna Shields' script is also OK, the cast are suitably tongue in cheek and the monsters are quite good. Director, Bruce Wemple, keeps things jollying along.

Dawn of the Beast is OK in its own terms. It's a movie for a few mates (girls are mates too), a few beers and a big bowl of corn chips.

At last, from all the dross cheap horror comes a fun, well-acted, well-scripted horror film. It is probably 1 out of every 20 of these cheap independent films worth watching. This is a good, fun romp. It has good characters, gory practical effects, fun moments, people you like, and a beginning, middle and a good end(someone survives) and no attempt to push a sequel.

Very, very basic horror movie with too much ideas and ambitions and not enough money nor competence. There is too many different monsters which make the result very messy. They probably had not enough money so they shot most of the movie indoors or in the woods, especially in the woods in the night. The result is not scary, just very messy and somehow bizarre. The movie could be way better if the authors focused on just one storyline, instead of trying to build multiple lines that even do not connect at times. It feels more like a mashup of at least two different movies, maybe even three movies at the same time. As a whole this simply does not work, because it jumps here and there. In the end it is confusing but not scary.

Choosing a movie to watch typically I try to do my best not to be shallow and prejudiced. So, coming from my experience, cheap looking posters, obviously bad acting in trailer, no trailer at all and low rating not always can speak for movies' qualities. Onlly such indications as presence of Eric Roberts or others, who discredited themselves, among the cast and rates drastically lower than 4 guarantee a movie a rejection. Sorry, can't watch everything... Besides all this sometimes when I see Uncork'd Entertainment's video introduction in trailer or in a movie's opening I can have doubts about the whole idea of watching it. Fortunately Dawn of the Beast is not the case. Not to say that this one is great, it's not. But still I don't regret spending my extremely precious time on it.

Where the movie succeds is it's ability to look original within horror slasher genre. It follows all slasher trops but manages to deliver something new as well. 5 kinda youngsters or middle-aged students (sometimes it's hard to tell, which category they represent), professor who leads the expedion (typical drunkhead), cabin in the woods (pretty original, ha?), opening scene with some entities, lurking in the forest (which tension managed to give me thrills though)... we've seen it all. But here we have a little more than that. For instance makers' approach regarding the final girl and the crucial battle with upbeat soundtrack closer to the end. All that along with impressive for a tight b-movie budget special effects, created eerie pressing atmosphere, not a bad acting of the cast and obvious dedication to the filmmaking process from all members of the crew make Dawn of the Beast a standout among other cliche'd stereotypical horrors.

On the negative side... Some script decisions are rather questionable, especially when it comes to the way they decided to eliminate a couple of characters in somewhere in the midle of the movie, too boring to my liking. Even though the acting isn't terrible, still it has its downs. Such as implausible screaming and big speeches right in the middle of the blood bath. The second one is more about flaws of the script too, but still. Also unlike the first part with all its tension and macabre atmosphere, the second one is not scary at all. Constant running around the house and hiding become annoying. Overuse of depressing soundtrack, designed to convey the proper mood, with the tension gone makes it irritating. Hopefully closer to the end movie gets back on track and keeps its pace and quality till the very closure.

All in all Dawn of the Beast is a good example of low-budget indie flick, flawed, but with heart. All envolved in the process knew exactly what they were going for, despite lack of money and, probably, experience. So...there you have it)