The Fallen Ones

I came into this movie really wanting to line it. I thought the premise had a lot of potential and was ripe for an interesting movie. Don't get me wrong here, I wasn't expecting Citizen Kane, I was taking this for the B movie that it is. That said, it still fell short of the expectation. The historical aspect of the story is glazed over and the ending left me a bit cold. The acting in the movie was very wooden. All in all I give it 4 for a great idea, but the movie could have scored much higher with a bit more attention to movie making fundamentals. Is it worth seeing? I didn't wish for my two hours back, but I don't know that I'd recommend it to others.

Five thousand years ago, in Sumer, the fallen angels had intercourse with human females and their offspring were a race of giants called Nephilim, destroyed by the great flood. The evil angel Ammon (Navid Negahban) mummifies his son Aramis to save him, and hides in hell. In the present days, the archaeologist Matt Fletcher (Casper Van Dien) finds Aramis tomb with excavating for building a resort for the entrepreneur Morton (Robert Wagner). The engineer Angela (Kristen Miller) joins the team, giving support in the diggings. When some workers mysteriously vanish, Morton hires the security force of Ammon to find the missing men. However, his real intention is to resurrect Aramis in the eclipse of the moon and dominate the human race with a new breed of giants.

"The Fallen Ones" has a promising idea, recalling those sci-fi horror movies from the 50's, but unfortunately it is badly executed. This low budget movie is leaded by Casper Van Dien, a promising actor in "Starship Troopers" that fell to a synonym of star of low quality films, and "The Fallen Ones" is no exception in his terrible filmography. The plot has many flaws and terrible lines, but contradictory entertains, with some laughable scenes. The funniest one is when Matt throws one dynamite banana precisely in the mouth of a 12 m (i.e., a height of a four floors building) mummy in movement, blowing up Aramis. The best in this watchable, but predictable and forgettable movie, is the beauty of Kristen Miller. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Os Anjos do Mal" ("The Angels of Evil")

It is a movie which is good enough to watch if there is nothing else and you like the genre. Maybe it is not meant for grownups to watch, but merely for the younger SF-lovers. Most of the scenes have been seen in other movies. The jokes are a little repetitive and there are some questions about the motives of the characters. The positive part is that the violence is not so obvious and taken with a sense of humor. The special effects are OK, but not up to date. Sometimes the scenes are so fast that you need to stop your DVD player to be able to appreciate the scene. Not a movie which you would like to see a second time. All in all a very predictable movie.

When archaeologist Matt Fletcher (Casper Van Dien of Starship Troopers) finds a mummified giant from the biblical age, he bites off more than he can chew as he & his crew are soon beset by both cult members who worship this thing as well as the giant's father, a fallen angel who hopes to resurrect him. Now it's up to Matt, Angela & Rabbi Schmidtt (Tom Bosley??!!?) to stop both factions and their evil plans.

This was one of the better Sci-fi Originals films that I've seen and I found that it moved at a brisk pace (for the most part, there are some lulls in action here and there) The film is heavily cheesy, but thats kind of part of it's charm. All the actors work well for the type of film that it is. Especially the always entertaining B-movie mainstay Irwin Keyes as a member of the cult.

My Grade: C

I saw not so fabulous rating on IMDb, but I went to see it anyway, because I am a big fan of Bible related material. First thing that bothered me was a little too much Indiana Jones wannabe movie, but it also looked like Casper Van Dien didn't see those Jones movies through (but he should). I believe he tried his best, but script just stunk. Music tried to be kinda Jones style too. Great work, but for such movie it seemed like too much work, like the video part did't deserve all that great music. Robert Wagner gave his best acting skills, he did a good job, but somehow the script was bringing everything down. "Jokes" are old school, somewhere 20 years old; they brought only cynic smile to my face. There are some really bad camera angels, SFX looks like homemade and unrealistic. Kevin VanHook had probably a good idea on the story (in my opinion, but I love such stories), but things just didn't work out in the end. Maybe he should put it on a paper when it was still fresh in his head. When I (in first minutes) saw that movie was going to be one of those 'low budget movies', I hoped that I will at least 'hear' a good story, but sometimes movies just disappoint.