For the entire month of April, Cinefessions will be locked into The Asylum, reviewing films released by the famed studio. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday throughout April you will get another review on a film released by The Asylum. April’s podcast will also be devoted to films from The Asylum. Today, Ashe hits rock bottom with Attila, which stars UFC fighter Cheick Kongo.
Title: Attila (2013)
Director: Emmanuel Itier
Runtime: 85 minutes
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I thought I’d mix things up a bit by watching another film out of the realm of movies I’d usually watch, and just grabbed another release Asylum put out last year. That was a serious mistake. This is, by far, one of the worst films I’ve ever watched. The plot is ridden with plot holes, it’s shot terribly, has amazingly bad effects, and looks like it was filmed on the grounds of a closed down resort that is supposed to double as a military base. I was mind-numbingly bored while I watched it which means it wasn’t even living up to the action end of things.
The idea is that Attila the Hun had a staff, or spear, or something, so powerful that he had it split up so no one could harness its power. They send in a military unit of three to retrieve a piece of it, get the commander out, and then ferry the spear and the commander off to a facility to study it. There’s a chunk of one of Attila’s people left there – or at least I’m assuming that’s what that is and not Attila himself – so the film is terribly misnamed. The person comes back as this unstoppable creature that they want the military commander, who’s being driven slowly insane by the troops he’s lost under his command, to go retrieve. There isn’t one solid acting performance in this snoozefest, and they tried. Oh my god, how they over-acted, and tried.
The film feels like it was thrown together over a weekend, and none of the deaths are ever that convincing so even as a horror flick, this movie is terrible. We’re supposed to believe this military base has a basic chain-link fence surrounding it, and the best they can muster up is a late model Jeep and four guys to chase the creature down with? Can you tell the suspension of disbelief goes out the window with this one? I can’t even say the music or audio was decent with this because I don’t remember it. All I remember is thinking that it was very generic. Either way, this completely misses the mark for just about anyone who cares about decent cinema, and isn’t even worth a rental.
Born the same year as Star Wars, it seems Ashe was destined to be into films with big impacts, explosions, and laser swords. With a love for sci-fi and horror, Ashe has a thing for games of both the tabletop and video variety. He is living a charmed, married life of sixteen years, along with several cats, a dog, and a bearded dragon. Ashe currently writes for Diehard Gamefan, covering video and tabletop games since 2008. Starting with Cinefessions just a few years ago, he has decided to tackle one of his original passions: film.
