Mandrake

A really silly little movie that I might have liked more as a teenager I guess. It has the wife of Jigsaw in it, that's a plus, no? Of course it's not, although I really do like her. Another character is pretty neat (imho), but the whole plot is a mess. It doesn't make much sense, the CGI isn't helping either.

But since this is a Syfy production (and you probably know them from their other mostly creature feature ... features), you should know what to expect... and what not to expect! With that in mind, you can enjoy the silliness of it all or just stop watching after the first couple of minutes, because you ain't going to like it any better along the ride.

Mandrake is one of those films that leaves you more confused than intrigued, trying to figure out if what you just watched was meant to be a horror film, a thriller, or some kind of misplaced woodland fantasy. The problem isn't just the story-it's that the film feels completely disoriented from beginning to end. There's no cohesion, no rhythm, and absolutely no sense of direction. It's as if the filmmakers threw together a collection of eerie visuals and half-written dialogue and hoped it would somehow come across as atmospheric. Instead, it's just frustratingly incoherent.

The screenplay, frankly, is where everything falls apart. A movie can survive weak effects, low budgets, even mediocre acting-but when the script is a mess, there's no saving it. Mandrake never establishes a clear sense of who the characters are, what they're doing, or why the audience should care. Every moment that should feel suspenseful ends up feeling random. It jumps between tones so wildly that you're not sure if you're supposed to be scared, intrigued, or just waiting for it to end.

It's hard not to compare it to Jaws-because Jaws knew exactly how to use atmosphere, tension, and pacing. Spielberg understood how to build suspense without showing everything, allowing the imagination to fill the gaps. Mandrake, on the other hand, throws everything at you but somehow still manages to say nothing. The directing feels unfocused, like the camera itself is wandering through the woods trying to find the story.

Character development? Practically nonexistent. You don't know who these people are, you don't care what happens to them, and the film doesn't give you any reason to invest in their journey. There are glimpses-tiny moments-where you can see what the movie wanted to be: a moody psychological folk horror that gets under your skin. But those moments vanish as quickly as they appear, replaced by confusion and a total lack of narrative payoff.

By the halfway mark, the film already feels like it's going nowhere fast, and by the end, you realize it never really started anywhere, either. It's disorganized, disjointed, and painfully slow for something that's supposed to keep you on edge.

To put it bluntly, Mandrake is a cinematic train wreck. It tries to be haunting but ends up being hollow. It tries to be mysterious but comes off as muddled. If you value your time-or your sanity-skip this one. There's no reward waiting at the end of this film, just confusion and regret.

After have seen a production from The Asylum, The Terminators, it was back again time to see a SyFy production. If you ever have seen a SyFy flick you will never forget it because they are mostly really bad. This one here was an average flick but again the cheap CGI teared it down.

As always the beginning is rather good and I thought, hell, this is going to be something in the Predator genre. But no, once the creature attacks it's just cheap CGI. The whole cocoon scene looked promising but of course they always did the killings off-camera. You do see some blood splattering here and there but it is never that frightening. Overall it looked like a flick to watch with the family on a Saturday night.

But this time they added a big name on the list, Max Martini from The Unit. The second main lead was by Betsy Russell, another big name from the Saw franchise but I was never involved with their characters. I couldn't care less if they were hurt or going to die. Storywise it was also a bit simple and you could see clearly what was going on.

I have seen worse, especially from SyFy but still, not a good movie.

Gore 1/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 2/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 0/5

An obsessed millionaire hires archaeologists, anthropologists and mercenaries, one of which does not exactly belong. But unfortunately, ancient tribesmen, some plant monster(s) and even their own boss eventually stand in their way.

Apparently Syfy films have been around for long enough for nostalgia as the natives will seem familiar to those who only hoped they could forget "Snake King"

But it doesn't end there! Because they added another villain; those who have witnessed such why-couldn't-it-be-forgettable films as "Cerberus" and "Raptor Island" will non-consentually feel a familiar feeling with the introduction of a heartless rich man, willing to murder his troops should they even consider getting in his path, slowing him, or on occasion not being the closest to the monster!

Ultimately many people die as you would expect, and naturally everyone you'd expect to die dies. The plant monster itself is an interesting idea but didn't contribute much more than, say, another giant or crocodile.

The beginning of this made-for-Siffy movie starts out with a lot of promise, as far as Siffy Original movies go. The production values are high (comparatively speaking), the acting is good, the sound is synchronized with the video, there aren't any glaring, amateurish CGI effects, and the actors' names may tug at long-forgotten memories of low-budget movies you've seen in the past. Usually, in the first two minutes, I can tell if made-for-TV movies are worth watching or not, and, frankly, most of them aren't. The production values and special effects maintain their comparatively high standards (approaching the quality of a ST:TNG episode), but the acting, directing, and, especially, story end up dragging down the score substantially. I can't really blame the actors, because their characters were written to be really stereotypical, barely-developed fodder for CGI monsters. There isn't much you can do with that. I'm not sure how much of the blame lies on the director, either, because he, too, probably did the best he could with the material he was given. How do you make a movie about a CGI monster that hunts down a ruthless CEO and his nameless mercenaries, without it becoming one huge, boring cliché? I'm surprised the CEO didn't try to personally burn down the Amazon rain forest just for laughs, like a Captain Planet villain. Seriously, this movie is a live-action Captain Planet episode, with the same heavy-handed moralizing and 2D villains.

Oh well. With a better script, maybe this movie could have been good, but it's still watchable. Barely.