Shortly after 9/11, CIA man Jonas Ball leads a special forces team through Afghanistan to find a local cleric who apparently knows the whereabouts of a weapons cache. They are taken by a local guide into some mountains that even the Taliban forces dare not enter. What they find is a trippy Middle Eastern version of The Bermuda Triangle (or seriously tripping out on peyote), which was the intended destination of Ball’s objective after all. Oops, he forgot to fill in his cohorts (including Michael C. Williams) on that one.
For those who wondered whatever happened to the directors of the clever and successful ‘The Blair Witch Project’, this UFO/supernatural-tinged military horror flick is half the answer, being directed and co-written by ‘BWP’ co-creator Daniel Myrick. Meanwhile, his ‘BWP’ buddy Eduardo Sanchez previously made the UFO/gore flick ‘Altered’. Sanchez’s film worked rather well. This one doesn’t come close to working.
I didn’t mind the main character being evasive and secretive, and I’m all for a film holding onto a few of its cards before playing them, but damn this movie takes forever to go anywhere, and when it finally does, it had already lost me ages ago. Not only that, but when it gets to where it’s going, you realise that it’s just a thinly veiled re-tread of ‘Red Sands’. It’s a bit better than that film, but that’s hardly a compliment. They’re both tedious beyond belief, though this one has more of a sci-fi bent.
How could I possibly care when it takes forever to even hint at its purpose, and doesn’t give us anyone terribly interesting to spend our time with while we wait for it to actually go somewhere? I also think filmmakers need to be very careful when using the current Middle East situations and other post 9/11 military activities in popular entertainment. You better do it well, or else it’s going to come off as cheap and not worth it. Still, it’s nice to see both ‘BWP’ guys are loyal to its stars, with Williams appearing in both this and ‘Altered’. He was much more effectively used in the latter, though.
Lead actor Ball is pretty ineffectual overall (he has since gone on to bigger and better things), and his voice-over is appalling, the guy’s just not gifted with a voice suited to hard-boiled narration (which isn’t necessary anyway, but then, how often is narration necessary?). Maybe it’s time for Myrick to give his buddy Eduardo a call, eh?
OVERALL SUMMARY
It’s reasonably well-acted and doesn’t look as cheap as it probably was, but that’s it for niceties, I’m afraid. I’ve never been a fan of the military horror film, and this one doesn’t change my mind, it’s a crushing bore.
