The Devil's Tomb (2009)

I like short movies when I don't feel like watching and reviewing a movie but I have to. I try to find short movies and pick one. This time my choice was The Devil's Tomb. I selected it because it had Henry Rollins and Ron Perlman.  Both had small parts. Others had much more screen time.

If movie is named The Devil's Tomb it likely has lot of pseudo-Christianity. Pseudo-Christianity usually leads to lazy writing. Writers expect audience to know the premise when you add angels and demons. Problem is there is so much of this kind of fiction with great variety. Different people know different versions of these stories. They probably don't know writers version of the premise.

Story is standard group going to base/spaceship/whatever where all contact has been lost. I could add long list of movies which The Devil's Tomb reminded me of. Those movies I remember. I will forget The Devil's Tomb almost as soon as I finish this post. Reason is movie doesn't have anything interesting. I didn't care about characters or the story. There was nothing to care about.

Characters didn't have any personality. When they have hallucinations telling their back story you don't have any idea what these hallucinations mean. You need to give some hints of characters backgrounds before you use background in hallucinations. That way audience may care what is happening.

Cuba Gooding jr's character has flashbacks through out the movie. Flashback just don't show what really happened until the end. Then it doesn't make much sense. We should care about the character but we can't because character didn't have any personality. Flashbacks could have given him personality but they just gave more questions.

Story is full of plot holes. It relies too heavily on effectiveness of pseudo-Christianity. It wasn't explained what caused people to become possessed. Henry Rollins' character looked like possessed but he wasn't. Others looking like that were. They got markings after they were "killed" and I am not sure if everyone possessed were "killed".

Possession wasn't only poorly explained thing in The Devil's Tomb. Almost everything is poorly explained. I have hard time figuring reasons to watch this movie. There really isn't anything interesting. It is not bad but there just isn't anything interesting.