Snow White and the Seven Samurai

I must hate myself, because this is my second film this week from The Asylum. I couldn't help it though... I loved that title and I like Quinton Rampage Jackson in The A-Team so I felt like even though this was almost certainly a bad film, that I just had to give it a try.

This monstrosity starts out with some just absolutely hideous acting as we see the patriarch of a crime family getting unceremoniously gunned down. After the he leaves most of his empire to his daughter Anya, her evil stepmother gets angry and vows to do something about it (See where this is going?). Anya (who's nickname is Snow White for some reason) is in danger as her stepmom sends Quinton 'Rampage" Jackson after her. The two get into a kung-fu battle because... why not? Anya is left for dead and the evil stepmother takes control of the company. This leads to her being taken in by a team of samurai assassins who train her in the ways of martial arts... you know just like the classic Disney tale.

Where to start? The movie is so bad. The budget must have been a few hundred dollars. You can tell because the lawyer of the big mafia boss, who supposedly is worth billions drives a Kia Soul! Fighting scenes were probably choreographed by elementary school kids. The story is ridiculous, doesn't make sense. Who writes garbage like this? The acting is so bad that the cast must have been taken from a pool of rejected actors who wouldn't be hired by anyone. Eric Roberts probably worked for free just to add another credit to his record of being the most prolific actor of all time. That record should have an asterisk (*) because doing garbage like this, which he has done plenty, should not count. All in all, there is not a single thing you can rescue from this awful waste of time of a movie.

This is just...I don't know what this is. It's so, so horrendously bad and there were so many things to pick apart that I will leave the other reviews that have already done that to cover them and instead go in for the throat of some of the moments that stood out for me. Like why a young, newly inherited gazillionair woman, who knows her step-mother is a raving nutter and gunning for her would be walking around the street at night with a bloody great ring around her neck, instead of driving a car daddy surely brought her? And how have the group of Samurai, remembering WHAT Samurai are meant to be, graduated from Samurai school without learning the art of stealth...because I've watched a bunch of footy players in their boots run around on gravel and not made as much noise as these girls did sneaking across the lawn, and then don't even get me started on the three guards they take out literally right in front of them ("nice shot" indeed) in plain view of the other guards but who don't notice them lying right there dead on the ground next to them.

I do have to give a special shout out to the staggeringly bad acting of the step-mother, who only talks with her teeth clenched to show how very, seethingly, outrageously, angry, OR how very conniving and cunning and greedily gleeful she is; but definitely don't take your eyes off her because her expressions are the same for both situations so you might get confused if you're not paying attention. I gave one star for the thing that I thought was maybe the only reason anyone should watch this dumpster fire and that I hope was a deliberate attempt at a public service announcement via movie...the horrible budget version 'of with great power comes great responsibility'. In the scenes where the Samurai are teaching Anya how to "fight", the whole process is slowed down and verbal explanations are given that are pretty much exactly what, as Luna even says in one scene, are basic self defence. Each of these scenes are filmed as though they are attempting to show the audience, some basic and common sense ways to defend themselves. I don't know if that was the thinking behind it but it's like you're suddenly 14 again and back in self defence for women at gym class and it was that, and the work the women in those scenes put in that got the movie one star and the other was because it looked lonely on its own.

This movie is so bad that it is almost funny. I understand that this is very likely a low budget film, but even giving the movie that, it is just horrible. The acting is atrocious. The script is awful. The action sequences are unbelievably terrible. If the movie would have taken a bit more of an intentional comedic approach, the movie might have actually worked. The premise of the movie should have made for an entertaining and action packed movie. However, we were stuck with this. This has to be one of Rampage Jackson's worst performances ever. And Eric Roberts? This should count against you on your filmography.

Now, from the movie's title and the movie's cover, I figured that this was most likely a mockbuster from The Asylum. Lo and behold, my assumptions were true. "Snow White and the Seven Samurai" is indeed a mockbuster from The Asylum.

I've seen enough dubious movies from The Asylum to be able to spot their movies a mile away. But there are actually the occasional good movie among the questionable movies that The Asylum spews out. And who knows, maybe "Snow White and the Seven Samurai" would be one such movie? And thus, I opted to watch the movie on account of it being a movie that I hadn't already seen. But I harbored no expectations to director Michael Su.

The script that writers Marc Gottlieb and Jacob David Smith concocted was actually not that bad, if you just look past the movie's title and take it for a random martial arts action movie that stumbled out of the 1990s. All that was missing was Cynthia Rothrock or Don 'The Dragon' Wilson.

Of the entire cast ensemble, I was familiar only with Eric Roberts and Anthony Jensen. The acting performances in the movie were actually fair enough, well aside from the over-acting put on by actress Gina Vitori.

The CGI effects in the movie were laughable. Especially the scene where the building exploded; it was so bad I had to go back a second time just to watch it again, laughing throughout it both times. It looked like something that was discarded in a 1990s computer game, because it looked too awful.

There is a fair amount of action and fighting in the movie, which definitely helped carry the movie a long way.

This movie is as cheesy as you would assume it would be given its title. So at least there was no surprise there.

My rating of director Michael Su's 2024 movie "Snow White and the Seven Samurai" lands on a five out of ten stars.