Plot: A man and his brother on a mission of revenge become trapped in a harrowing occult experiment dating back to the Third Reich.
Director: Joel Schumacher
Writer: David Kajganich
Stars: Henry Cavill, Dominic Purcell and Emma Booth
Nazi demons and third eyes
Until I saw “Town Creek” I was under the impression watching “Sex and the city 2” and “Daybreakers” was an awful experience. Boy, was I wrong about that.
I hate gore. I like horrors – but only the ones with dense, mysterious atmosphere like “The Others” or “The Ring”. I don't really enjoy “Saw” series, because it is not scary at all. It's simply gross. I'm not delicate or skittish, I don't mind blood – In fact I cannot wait to go to the morgue (I'll clarify – my studies include that kind of trips, not that I want to go there as a corpse). But I only watch gory movies if I have a reason. The best reason. Hot actor in the cast – Henry Cavill. Bad reason? Hey, I know a lot of films because of this practice.
To summarize the plot – two brothers, one of them is trying to avenge what happened to him, go on a farm where apparently, immortal family and nazi demon are hiding.
I have so many questions about this movie – why the hell Joel Shumacher directed it? What is Michael Fassbender doing there? Haven't Cavill suffered enough (he didn't get the parts in “Batman Begins”, “Casino Royale”, “Twilight” although he was at the very end of race) and God decided to punish him some more?
Joel Shumacher is a good director. He did “Falling Down” - brilliant movie, “Phone Booth” - great movie and “8 mm” - movie I really like. But he had the bad luck of doing “Batman and Robin” the most laughed at movie ever and apparently he didn't manage to win the trust of the producers back ever since. His last film “Number 23” had the same problem “Town Creek” has – good idea, good concept, awful movie. It's not Shumacher's fault – it's the script – boring, slow, with awful dialogues. The basic idea is good, there are some intense scenes and if somebody with actual skills wrote the script the movie would be good. I see the dude who is responsible for this also wrote “The Invasion”. I'm not surprised. I read that Schumacher actually re-wrote certain parts of "Town Creek". I hope I'll never see original script.
Fassbender, from “300”, “The Hunger” and yes, “Inglourious Basterds” manages to be good here. He is scary, menacing and not laughable. Very good actor, I'm certain we will hear about him many times in the future. But he makes some questionable decisions lately – this and “Jonah Hex”, which appears to quickly become the worst movie of 2010 according to the critics. But I think as long as the actor does great job it doesn't really matter that job takes place on the steaming pile of crap those movies are.
The brothers are played by TV stars, which is never a good thing – from “Prison Break” Dominick Purcell and from “The Tudors” Henry Cavill. Now, anyone who ever saw at least one episode of those shows knows what follows and what is seen in “Town Creek” - Purcell can't act, Cavill can. Too bad the only thing they do is – running, shooting and then running again. But when the occasional dialogue appears Cavill is plausible as human being and Purcell is not. The immortal girl, Liese who lives in the farmhouse was played by Emma Booth. She was quite good, definitely better than the brothers.
The movie features some of the most ridiculous scenes I've ever seen. Get this – the Nazi demon can be defeated when the blood or bones or whatever of his ancestors gets to his blood stream. So Liese finds the bones – they are on the farm of course. Why? No idea. She crashes them, Cavill takes off his shirt and she ties his arms and cuts his back after which she places the bone powder in his wounds. Then Fassbender, I'm gonna write this again, the man who was in “Inglourious Basterds” appears and licks Cavill's back. I don't even now how to comment on that. I'm pretty sure Shumacher by this time figured out he was directing awful movie and at least with that scene some of the girls would be tempted to watch. Hey, it worked on me.
The movie deserves only 2 stars. I wish I could give it more, but it's the kind of a movie that should be aired on TV after 3 am, when nobody is watching. Those 2 stars are for a good prologue and Fassbender's performance. Both the director and actors deserved better than this.
22/100
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