The Tomb: Devil's Revenge (2020)

        "I'm going to blow your brains out all over that horse!" says William Shatner early on in THE TOMB:DEVIL'S REVENGE, out in a bit on digital platforms from 4Digital Media. Viewers who make it to the end of the film will, like that horse, wonder what they have done to suffer such an indignity. Yes, once again House of Mortal Cinema finds itself paying a visit to the realm of Truly Terrible Films with a movie that is less deserving of a review and more a funeral, which is just one of the things incompetently depicted onscreen in this one.

Watch out horses everywhere!

A team of experts explore a cave in Kentucky but find themselves challenged by a slight incline that causes them to swear mightily while one of their number falls down it and somehow ends up a bloody mess. The lead is archaeologist John Brock (Jason Brooks) who decides, after much hallucinating and a heart attack, that the best thing to do is go back there with his family including poor Jeri Ryan as his long-suffering (by now we know how she feels) wife. 

One of the shots that pops up at least four times

       He's searching for a cursed relic that causes Aztec demons in heavy metal outfits to appear at regular intervals and kill everyone. Or possibly not. They've been haunting the family for years according to William Shatner, again only possibly, because while attempting to explain all this Mr Shatner goes off on the kind of rambling incoherent rant that Ed Wood would have been proud of, so who knows what's actually going on? Certainly not the makers of this one, who in terms of narrative coherence demonstrate the highest levels of 'I Can't Be Arsed' we've seen so far this year.

Jeri Ryan in talks with her agent

Anyway, off goes John, family in tow, in his shit-stained falling apart Winnebago which we assume is in such a poor state of repair because it's going to get blown up or driven off a cliff (these things do not happen). A whole load of nonsense does happen however, none of which is explained by the shock horror "ending", and none of which distracts from the many questions we still have as the credits role which include: how many times are we going to see that identical flashback of an Aztec sacrifice? (Four). Will we even see the giant spider that has been leaving all the webbing in the caves? (No.) Why do they need torches in such well-lit caves and why do they keep shining them directly into the camera? (You can probably answer that one for yourself by now). 

A rare shot where the screen isn't a white-out

Sorry everyone but THE TOMB:DEVIL'S REVENGE is terrible. In fact it's on the nominations list for worst of the year. "You didn't see shit," says Mr Shatner close to the end. Oh yes we did, Bill. Oh yes we did. 

THE TOMB: DEVIL'S REVENGE is out on digital platforms from 4Digital Media on Monday 14th September 2020