Mandrake

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

This film opens with a woman running through woods (being chased by a mainly unseen being). This is never a good sign. If you've watched pretty much any handful of random horror films, you'll know that 'woman running through woods' is possibly the most overused cliché of the genre (with perhaps the teenagers having sex and dying being a close second).

That opening is a kind of warning of things to come. Some films thrive on having a low budget. The lack of money behind the picture forces the film-makers to use new and more subtle techniques to tell the story. Not here. This film has no budget and it shows in every scene.

It's about a team of archaeologists, sent somewhere in South America (like the location really matters!) to retrieve something for someone (again, such details are kind of pointless in the scheme of things). However, this 'South American' jungle looks suspiciously like some nice grassy fields in America. Plus the 'natives' also look a little Caucasian, considering they are supposed to have lived in the hot jungle all their lives.

The acting isn't all bad, but the dialogue is. Just because the film is set in a wood (sorry, jungle), the writers seem to want to make the characters talk like they're out of Predator. Yes, there's something hunting them, but whereas Predator used a monster that was actually there, the makers of Mandrake spent the entire $2.50 budget on some 'creepy' CGI tentacles. Woo.

If you like cheesy monster-munching movies, then you probably know plenty out there which will amuse and entertain (try things like Deep Rising, Tremors, or Grabbers to name but a few). Mandrake is not one of them.

I wanted to like this movie, filmed in Shreveport, La. including a better cast than some of these SyFy movies have, but NO. Andre Stevens of Dallas fame and b-movie star produced this film it has some good special FX, and production values, yet the script never works, the actors never capture their characters. Watch it you sit thru the whole thing thinking wow this looks better than most Saturday Night flicks, even the monster is fairly cool looking, and when its over you'll think what happened to my last two hours. The actor from the Unit isn't bad but you just can't seem to connect to anyone in the film. A few inventive moments nothing more.

In a fictitious Latin American country, the soldier of fortune Sgt. McCall (Max Martini) leads the Vargas Expedition sponsored by the powerful Harry Vargas (Benito Martinez) and formed by the archaeologists Dr. Felicia (Betsy Russell) and Lin (Wayne Pere); the local Santiago Zavala (Nick Gomez) and a baggage carrier through the jungle. In the base, Carla Manning (Jon Mack) gives support to McCall's team and is the liaison with Harry, who is obsessed for a dagger.

When they reach a tomb facing south in a sacred ground, they open the tomb and finds a dagger with a ruby craved in a skeleton and Lin removes weapon from the grave, accomplishing the objective of their assignment. Dr. Felicia advises them that the tomb has a warning advising to not remove the dagger. Soon they discover that nature and the Yamballi tribe are chasing them; further, the previous expedition sent to the forest to retrieve the dagger has been slaughtered.

"Mandrake" is a TV movie released in Brazil on DVD. The story is absolutely predictable and the adventure of the expeditionary team is not scary. In the end, watching this film was a waste of time in a Saturday afternoon. Better off if I had taken a nap. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "A Raiz do Mal" ("The Root of the Evil")

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.