Daemonium: Underground Soldier

This is the most original film I've seen in awhile. I read other people's reviews & felt I just had to speak up for this movie. It DOES have a plot, develop characters, follow a story line, etc etc. It was very creative and fun to watch. Please give it a try & disregard the reviews that say it doesn't make sense.

This Argentinian made film is a truly bizarre one and very hard to categorize. It's what I imagine you'd get if you blended Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1996) with the Russian mess that was Night Watch (2004).

It tells the very muddled confusing stories of a man who makes a deal with a demon, a genetically modified woman with a dark secret and grizzled wizard.

A wizard you say? Yes but this is no fantasy movie, it's futuristic with laser swords and your generic looking stormtrooper types side by side with demons, portals and other tropes.

It's a weird blend of genres and it just doesn't work. The tones are inconsistent, one minute its dark, serious and gory. The next you hear splashing noises when a fat guy runs and the wizard is throwing out cheesy puns. It's like they threw a bunch of random ideas and scripts into a hat, drew a few at random and made a movie out of it.

It's not entirely bad, if this had been better formed it might have made for a passable effort but the story is so disjointed, the movie has no real protagonist and I was left scratching my head more than once.

If you want a jumbled film full of Buffy the Vampire slayer like demons, cheesiness and that Night Watch (2004) appearance and visual style then this may be what your looking for.

The Good:

Some nice practical effects

There are some decent ideas in there, if you look really hard

The Bad:

Manages to look both cheap & professional at the same time

Disjointed plot

Far too many unforgivable story flaws

Inconsistent tone

Daemonium is a strange film. It sets out to do something ambitious: tell a story about good versus evil in a strange world slightly different to our own in an inventive way. Does it succeed? Sort of.

The story-telling here is non-linear, and jumps around. This can be brilliant if done well. In this case, it sort of works, however the pieces of the story don't quite fit together at the end, which denies the audience the moment of revelation when everything fits together. At the same time, there clearly is a set timeline there, which leaves the audience frustrated by the plot rather than with a sense of wonder at the bizarreness of it all, as with Un Chien Andalou.

Some of the visuals are great. There's one scene where a character has a vision of what has happened in the past, and the way it's shot actually manages to emulate the visual feel of TV programs from the past, such as Star Trek. The visual theme also feels consistent throughout the film.

Most of the film is okay. The acting is all either good or okay, with none standing out as particularly bad. Some of the fight scenes are entertaining and exciting. However, towards the end the quality of these scenes begins to drop significantly. The big final fight scene in particular is a big let-down, looking more comical than dramatic.

The camera-work needs improving. There is an overuse of Dutch angles, particularly in the opening scene, some of the editing is too choppy, and shakey camera shots happen far too often.

So overall, I'm not sure about this one. It has some interesting ideas and has the guts to try them, but it's let down in several places by bad camera-work, or plot inconsistencies. So I give it a 6/10, because there were a lot of good and inventive ideas about both the story and execution. However, not all of these paid off, and other elements, such as the final battle, weren't given the attention they needed.

We watched this as a group that enjoys horrible movies. This movie is beyond any word used to describe horrible. God awful and pure crap are too good for this film. The best we could figure out is this atrocious excuse for a flick is that someone took something from just about every sci-fi and horror film/TV show and blended them all together. Yes, there is even anime references and plenty of over the top cheesiness. I myself wanted to delete what IMDB has for a plot and rewrite it to say "Absolutely none". We all believe this was all filmed, edited and produced on a used iPhone 7 and iPad for special effects. If you know you have 2 hours left to live you should watch paint dry or water boil long before you consider ever watching this slop.

A fantasy, science fiction slash horror film from an Argentinian film maker Pablo Parés, where the forces of science fiction and the horrors of fantasy meet. The story, very loosely, going that a demon was unleashed upon the world by unscrupulous men in a bid for power. Now, years later, one of the men corrupted by that demon is looking to open a portal for its re-emergence and it's up to the original wizard, who opened the portal, to stop him. Plus there's a really big sideplot about a scorned lover turned BDSM themed assassin. Make of that what you will.

Daemonium is one of those so bad it's good films. A film you should definitely watch with some beers and a couple of good friends. Don't watch this alone and sober, I cannot stress that enough. It's nowhere good enough to hold up under any kind of critical scrutiny.

Granted, the effects are surprisingly nice. The costumes are elaborate, as are the various masks. The demon especially looks badass.

But, sometimes there is too much of a good thing. The film has some real problems focusing on what kind of a world it wants to build. Every single trope in modern media seems to be valid at the same time. We have wizards, cyberpunk assassins, demons, futuristic soldiers, post-apocalyptic gypsy courts, science gadgets, swords, armour, tarot cards, robots, and everything else under the sun, all happening at the same time. And that gets confusing, fast. In the hands of a more talented storyteller, this could be made to work, but here it just muddles the waters.

Still, there is passion in what the film is trying to pull off, and I can imagine the appeal that can have. Not a good movie by any stretch, but an interesting one, and I can see myself recommending this to certain friends of mine.