Vale da Morte

Ok first off, lets get this out of the way, I have seen a lot worse monster of the week movies than this, a heck of a lot worse but that is by no means a glowing endorsement.

The effects and camera work in this film are fairly decent, the monster looks cool and is actually a man in a well made suit instead of cheap, shoddy, CGI.

The acting is.....Passable, I guess.

The music is generic as hell and I couldn't help but get 'Doom' on a low budget vibes from the whole thing.

What really cheesed me off with this was the awful dialogue which feels like it was written by a young boy, some of it is downright cringe worthy.

There's also a massive over reliance on slow motion shots for pretty much any scene in the film that has the slightest bit of action, it's almost like it was directed by someone who's obsessed with cheesy 1990's straight to DVD action flicks. It's really distracting because it's so used so much. I think if you played the action scenes at normal speed, you'd end up with a 45 minute film.

The monster, although fairly impressive to look at, get way too little screen time and the build up takes far too long for it to be interesting.

All in all, a fairly generic, quite dull monster movie that does have it's moments, but despite looking well made, it still feels a bit amateurish.

A million times better than most things that the SYFY channel or the Asylum do though, so I will give it that.

Some people with lower expectations than me will probably enjoy this but it's one I won't be watching again unfortunately, although it doesn't offend me like say, 25 headed shark attack or Sharktopus vs Freddy Kruger vs Godzilla takes on the New York Yankies would :)

This movie suffers from cringe-enducing dialogue, subpar acting by a lot of the characters, and way way too much slow motion during action scenes. In short would not waste your time on this.

Two incompetent soldiers fight to rescue a scientist from some newly discovered creature that takes over your DNA - hmmm, where have I heard that before

The first 30 minutes are just fighing in a jungle (decent pyrotechnics btw) where the two soldiers don't bother shooting the enemy even when they find your compadre you "hid" 5 minutes earlier under some tree roots with a big opening so no one could see him

The creature (some guy in fairly good makeup) is on screen for maybe 10 minutes in total - most of the final hour is just running thru tunnels or crawling thru air ducts or fighting the bad guys

Passable but only just - you've seen it all before.

I had the opportunity to sit down and watch the 2021 action horror movie titled "Death Valley", and I have to admit that I found the movie's cover/poster rather interesting actually. Sure, I hadn't even ever heard about the movie prior to watching it, but it being a horror movie that I hadn't already seen was more than sufficient to make me interested. And the movie's cover definitely helped sweeten the deal.

And now having sat through writer and director Matthew Ninaber's "Death Valley", I think that he definitely had a love for the "Resident Evil" game franchise, especially the first two or three games, because this movie was just oozing with the same atmosphere that you experience in those games. And even the Nephilim creature design in this movie was very reminiscent of the "licker" creatures that you see in "Resident Evil", except that it was an upright humanoid-creature in this movie.

So how was "Death Valley"? Well, it was watchable, but it felt like a somewhat flaccid movie actually, especially once you get over the thrill of the "Resident Evil"-like atmosphere, which ultimately was the best thing about the movie. And why is that? Because the storyline was rather mundane and simplistic to the point where it was bordering on lazy writing. Writer and director Matthew Ninaber was running things on generic horror tropes and borring a tad too heavily from the "Resident Evil" games actually. So the movie was lacking originality.

I do like the creature design on the Nephilim creature that was stalking the underground complex. The special effects were good and the creature was rather realistic. That was adding a lot of enjoyment to the movie actually.

The acting performances in the movie were fairly bland. I wasn't familiar with the cast here, which is something I usually enjoy. However, the acting performances in "Death Valley" were just not outstanding and they were weighing down the movie.

The ending of the movie was just laughably bad and predictable. You saw that coming a mile away. Needless to say that I am not spoiling anything, but you are not in for a grand ending.

My rating of "Death Valley" lands on a generous four out of ten stars. It is a movie that is adequate enough for a single viewing, if you enjoy action horror movies, but that is also about all there is to it.

The audio is terrible, as if whoever was in charge of sound design was their first time. Dialogue isn't great, action is okay, and the only redeemable quality is that the monster is cool. This movie is a dud. Try again next time, Psycho Goreman.