France 1944, during WWII, a troup of US soldiers finds a few strangely maimed bodies. Hitler has unleashed his secret weapon, and soon the soldiers will become more than aware of what it is. Lieutenant Schmidt is joined by Captain Joe Russo and a bunch of other soldiers to go behind enemy lines, find the source of the weapon, and destory it before it's too late.
Nazi zombies and werewolf's. It might sound cool, but didn't quite work all the way, especially when talking about werewolf's, since that basically just came out looking kinda ridiculous. Although, Horrors of War wasn't half as bad as I first had thought it would be. That on the other hand doesn't mean that it was a really good movie, but it looked quite all right, the acting didn't make you cringe, and the pacing was pretty good. But on the negative side thought, it wasn't the least bit memorable, it had no effective scares, and it seemed like it had a hard time deciding whether to be a horror or a war movie, and I guess that's why it became both. Horror and war seems like two great categories combined, unfortunately it didn't really work this time either, same as with Deathwatch, The Bunker etc. Only war/horror combination that seems to have somewhat worked ok was the Korean flick R-Point, which I thought was a good flick, even though that wasn't great either.
At least the way Horrors of War starts off kinda made you wanna see what would happen next, plus that, the intro itself looks nice as well. But in the end, that really means nothing if it doesn't come out looking ok when it's over. My big question though is that, when making a movie like this, why not take things up a notch? Why not make it a slightly sick, gruesome and disturbing experience, instead of having a guy wearing some werewolf-looking mask that looks like it was purchased from some novelty store. Having just a tiny bit of gore instead of having a real bloodbath? This is war and horror, one kinda expects to see blood, and a lot of it. And then these Nazi zombies which looked kinda cool, but that wouldn't even scare a 12 year old.
I'm pretty sure that all the everyday Joe's, and the rest of the commersial movie goers will not go watch Horrors of War. The audience for a movie like this is of course an horror audience so why not make it a full horror experience instead of holding back so much? It kinda sadness me watching stuff like this at times, because the very foundation and the idea behind it is not that bad to begin with, it's just that they never seems to be able to do anything proper with it, and like I said before, are holding back too much. Why not just try to please the real horror fans instead of trying to please all different kinds of people, especially when you know that this movie will be seen by horror fans, and at the same time will probably not be seen by people who are not into horror. I just don't get it, and this thing just keeps repeating itself when it comes to a lot of new flicks coming out these days.
The movie featured a lot of war scenes, but even though they were ok, they were just not as good as in a proper war flick. And the horror is just not as good as in a great (well, good) horror flick. Even though it didn't really fail with delivering both war and horror, the way it delivered it sometimes just felt a bit wrong, and could've been done a bit better. The acting all through the movie was actually decent, and I found myself having no problem with the cast, except for one guy playing some German doctor...he sucked big-time. I'm gonna stop my complaining now, and say that while it had a lot of faults to it, it was still watchable.
Blood and bullets, zombies and werewolf's, you get some of it all, but in the end it was nothing spectacular or even that great to begin with. At least the movie had some decent things in it, and I thought it was ok to watch. Even if it wasn't very suspensefull, a lot of stuff happened the movie throughout so at least it provided some entertainment.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE:
MOVIE YEAR: 2006
DIRECTOR: Peter John Ross, John Whitney
WRITING CREDITS: Peter John Ross, Philip R. Garrett
GENRE: Action, Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi, War
CAST: Jon Osbeck, Joe Lorenzo, Daniel Alan Kiely
COUNTRY: USA
RUNTIME: 99 min
RATING: 4/10
Horrors of War Website/IMDB Click here
Horrors of War Trailer Click here
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