The Tomb: Devil's Revenge (2019)

You would have thought, that in more modern times, it would become increasingly harder to actually pass off a steaming pile of fucking horseshit as an actual presentable, respectable movie only to fail catastrophically at the box office and/or at doing the streaming numbers on the portal of choice. Delete as necessary. But you would actually be so wrong, as was I when I started to draft this post, and if anything (maybe it's the development of technology to make movies more accessible, and to better catalogue and archive reviews?) the large bulk of what makes up my coveted "Worst Movies Ever Made" content actually comes from the 2000's era. It is true that since roughly 2015 onwards the number of movies earning spots on the list dwindles significantly, with only one movie from 2020 onwards falling just inside the threshold, but I genuinely thought the good bulk of my content would be 70's, 80's stuff. It wasn't until I looked at it chronologically that I realised just how much bollocks was pumped out between 2000 - 2010... however harkening back to my earlier point, there have been very few most recent entries to the WMEM category, potentially due to the fact that thanks to that pandemic most movie production was completely on ice... but potentially also owing to that aforementioned fact one of them that has very neatly slipped under the Worst Movie radar but straight into my watchlist is 2019's: The Tomb: Devil's Revenge. William Shatner, Jeri Ryan, Jason Brooks, Brendan Wayne - on paper the cast makes an intriguing case: how can these big names have ended up doing such an horrific movie? William Shatner hasn't done a bad movie?! Right?... Surely a heavyweight name like him and like Jeri Ryan are enough alone to save any piece of tepid garbage from the discount bargain bin in Poundsavers?! I guess there is only really one way to find out. You have to watch it.

Innnnn... the opening 20 minutes a man called John Brock (Jason Brooks) is exploring a cave with 2 hired.... Caveologists (whatever people who professionally explore caves are called) in an area he believes contains an ancient relic he is searching for. He sees the relic but proceeds to have a coughing fit during which it disappears. He is then forced to turn back when one of the Caveologists (sorry) gets in to trouble and John finds him dead, inexplicably covered in his own blood. John then proceeds to have visions and hallucinations whilst on the phone to his wife Susan (Jeri Ryan), causing him to career off the road and suffer a heart attack. As he flatlines in hospital he proceeds to have... hallucinations? Prophetic dreams? I'm not sure involving scary looking demons, the devil and him shooting himself in the head, committing suicide, causing him to suddenly jolt back into life again and wake up in hospital. Determined that he has to go back to the cave. I have no idea what the fuck is going on and it's only the first 20 minutes. Despite literally just dying, and despite having had a heart attack John is somehow allowed to leave the hospital... and on the drive back with Susan, something possesses her and she talks gibberish I won't pretend to understand with the underlying plot point being that John has "awoken" something, and after he goes to college and picks up the "kids", embarrassing them both as he has hallucinations imagining his daughter sleeping with one of the students and his son being a drug pusher with another student, the 2 students he had altercations with both begin to see the same demon hallucinations John is seeing with both students ending up murdered. Going to see his dad (William Shatner) John reveals that's he's scared of dying and can't go through with destroying the relic. After Dad cuts a bit of a speech about dying he demands that John go back and destroy the relic or "I'll kill you myself." wow, supportive guy. And then proceeds to ramble on some more about a bunch of stuff that made no sense to me. Christ this is fucking horrendous? Determining that once and for all he has to find the relic and destroy it John sets off to that same cave again, this time with Susan, his son Eric (Robert Scott Wilson) and Dana (Ciara Hanna) in tow after Susan refused to let John go alone and the journey there does serve to set up some exposition though when Dana reads from her Grandpa's journal about how the People of the Sun and the People of the Night were plagued by a demon summoned by the People of the Night that was only stopped when it was trapped by the Gods inside a statue. A statue known only as "the relic." Leading his family into the cave, with the rest of them treating it like a jaunty holiday expedition, despite it being y'know, the gates of Hell... We are 1 hour into the movie at this point and despite spending an hour to get this far, I have no idea why the family are plagued by the relic, what they are actually plagued by (I have a rough approximation that it's visions of demons that appear to be killing other people but it's not elaborated on) or why they have made the decision they have to destroy the relic? Surely destroying the thing that's holding the demon captive is a bad thing?! Anyway... the family make their way through the cave and into the main chamber where John saw the relic at the beginning of the movie, and they... retrieve the relic. Done. That was easy. But Eric, outside of the chamber starts messing around with the ancient weapons when he turns around to discover a whole gang of very pissed off demons. Returning from the chamber the rest of the family join him only to discover that behind them is an equal number of extremely pissed off demons! It doesn't take them long to slaughter both Eric and Dana pretty hastily, and three of the demons take Susan captive before the lead demon, or the Devil I guess ritualistically slaughters her in front of John. Despite being absolutely surrounded by demons... John somehow manages to run away with the relic in his bag, and we learn that demons won't go into the water after him. Maybe they just hate getting wet? And John makes it out of the cave alone. Making his way back to the truck, overcome with grief John is about to blow his brains out when his Dad calls and asks him what's going on as he just spoke to Susan and they are all trapped in the cave. He tells John to stay by the road and that he will make his way there. No sooner has John put the phone down, he his ambushed by three demons who appear to take the relic from him before disappearing. As he waits for his dad to arrive, one of the caveologists (sorry, again), R.J (Phillip Andre Botello) arrives, angry mob in tow. They seem to have some beef about accusing John of bringing bad fortune to the area and are just about to murder him on the spot when Dad arrives and sends them all packing. As Dad demands that they are going to go back into the cave, find the family and get the relic, the angry mob on the way back to the village presumably run into the demons and are all ruthlessly murdered. Making their way back into the cave... again... this time with Dad tooled up with a fucking high calibre grenade launcher... John and Dad make their way to the chamber where Dad proceeds to unload that fucking grenade launcher on anything with a skull for a face. Easily disposing of the Devil and sending John to retrieve the relic from his grasp. Making their way to the exit, John catches up with Susan and the kids who are all very much alive, but Dad is ambushed behind by a demon, forcing John to go back for him, leaving Susan with the relic. After saving his dad from the clutches of the demons, Dad sends John on his way, pledging to stay behind to ensure they escape and as John and family make it to the entrance, Dad triggers an explosive that collapses the whole cave system, sealing the entrance forever. In the closing scenes the family yuck it up and are generally quite jovial despite Grandpa just blowing himself to chunks in order to save them... before carving the relic up and burning it in a fire. They do lament the passing of "Grandpa" in the closing moments at least, until suddenly Susan morphs into the Devil, there is a load of confusing scene switches, John is having a cardiac arrest again and I don't know what the fuck is going on. And then it ends with some quote about dying.

Hoooooly high heavens. No fucking sense. This movie made no fucking sense. Where the fuck do you want me to start? I need a minute.

What was the family's connection to the relic? What was Dad/Grandpa's obsession with it all about? Why did John start seeing demons after he touched it? How much of the movie actually happened and how much of it was... I don't know, hallucinations or some shit whilst John was dying in the hospital? What the fuck was that ending all about anyway?! EXPLAIN THINGS. And if you aren't going to explain then they at least need to make some semblance of sense?! They just threw shit at a wall and then presented the section of wall covered in shit like it was some kind of fucking art piece?

A minor point, but in the rolling credits at the end Jason Brooks character is referred to as "Sergio." and William Shatners as "Hayes". I never once heard them referred to by either of those names? Sergio?! They spent the whole fucking movie calling him John?! And I feel sorry for Jeri Ryan after watching this. I do. Because she looked like she was trying. And to be fair Jason Brooks wasn't that bad most of the time, but they must have needed the money because one look at this script must have been enough for both of them to go "wow, no... fuck this?!" but they didn't. They actually signed up for this. And I feel sorry for them, because any talent they brought to this picture was ultimately wasted. Jeri Ryan is better than this. Jason Brooks is better than this. And if you're wondering why I'm not including William Shatner in that circle it's because Shatner co-wrote this nonsense. Presumably whilst under the influence of incredibly strong painkillers?!

It made no sense. They didn't really bother to explore the details here, in fact they fucking jumped straight in - the family is cursed by this relic they are trying to destroy. It's not explained why, or how they came to determine it was the relic. Even the curse isn't fully elaborated on. Apart from some jump cut visuals of demons slaughtering people I assumed were hallucinations. And they took an hour to build to John and family finally setting off to destroy the relic then just spunked all over the place with the last half hour in a confusing orgy of total bollocks.

And then there's the other stuff! That same bar of music every time a demon came into the shot. It happened so often it bordered on parody. It started to get amusing. You were waiting for it. And it's that same horror movie cliché bar of music, you know what I mean: "DUUUUUUUN!" every time, about 10 times. It worn out any effect it had by about the 3rd time to be honest. Amateur stuff. The music in general actually, was pretty generic. I mean, it sort of fitted the theme and they tried to invite an unsettling atmosphere with it in a couple of sections but by the time they started to try and pull that off I already had 'creepy unsettling music' fatigue cos it had been exercised so much in the prior hour with the bait and switch DUUUUUUUN! moments that I guess were supposed to be jump scares?

And, as might be expected, a good handful of the movie was shot inside a cave. Which is fine. But they over did the 'torches shining into the lens' cliche a whole bunch. In fact, it got a bit uncomfortable to watch. How would you like it if someone kept shining a torch in your eyes, it would fucking piss you off and it fucking pissed me off watching! Have you seen 2005's The Cave? It's a similar premise: cave explorers discover monsters hidden deep underground and they slowly all get picked off one by one. They did it better. They didn't have half the movie shine torches in your eyes.

Sticking William Shatner as the lead is a bait and switch as well as he "enjoys" roughly about 10 minutes of screen time. And he's bloody terrible. Ranting on complete bollocks that makes no sense. I genuinely found myself hating him. His characters motivations were never explained, he took every opportunity to basically belittle and insult his son, he was came across as a unlikeable stark raving lunatic. And that was Bill Shatner! One of the most likeable men in America. And this movie did that to him. He wrote it! He wrote himself to be that character! He inflicted it on himself!? Incredible. Much like the plot of this movie it is baffling.

I hope I never have to watch this again. I hope you never have to watch it. And the worst of it is. I've seen worse. Not much worse, I'll tell you that. But it was pretty fucking horrendous. I hate it when I come away from a movie with a sense of discontentment. I feel like I've been cheated, like the movie screwed me over and stole 1 hour 30 minutes of my time without giving me anything back in return. And that is exactly what happened here. If I'd have paid for this, and technically I did cos I streamed it, I'd have wanted my money back. Zero out of Five.