The Tomb: Devil’s Revenge
The Black Hollow Cave in Kentucky, deep, dark and largely unexplored; for archaeologist John Brock it is more than just a challenge, it is his latest attempt to locate an artefact known as “the relic” which John’s father believes has cursed his family which traces its lineage back to the Conquistadors.
One of the expedition hurt in an accident, John leaves him momentarily to explore further, believing he is near his goal, but when he returns the injured man is dead, mutilated, but for John the nightmare is only beginning even as he returns to the city, suffering from visions of demons, of ancient rituals of sacrifice conducted within the network of caves.
His wife pleading with him that his obsession must stop, John’s bullying father instead convinces him otherwise, that the only way he can break the curse is to return to the cave to retrieve the relic and destroy it, but this time he must be accompanied by his family, Susan and their two children Dana and Eric, a family day out to hell and back.
Directed by Jared Cohn, The Tomb: Devil’s Revenge has a screenplay credited to “the writer of Star Trek The Next Generation,” namely Maurice Hurley who contributed twelve scripts to the series, among them Q Who which introduced the Borg, and also served as a producer during the first two seasons; Hurley having died in 2015, it can only be presumed that, like the characters, Devil’s Revenge has been in production hell for a prolonged period.
Emphasising the Star Trek connection, heading the cast are Jeri Ryan and William Shatner, Seven of Nine and James Tiberius Kirk themselves, as John’s long-suffering but supportive wife Susan and his bullying and small-minded father, while John himself is Jason Brooks whose numerous credits include a role as helmsman of the Romulan mining ship Narada.
Now in his late eighties with a career on stage and screen stretching across seven decades, Shatner once again essentially plays himself, delivering monologues on his own profound suffering and sacrifices without a hint on sensitivity or insight and happier sharing the screen with horses than his human co-stars, while Brooks and Ryan do their best with material which is, at best, pedestrian.
That word is particularly apt, as a great deal of Devil’s Revenge is spent walking, through corridors, up stairwells, through libraries, through forest, and of course through the depths of the Black Hollow Cave itself, the key location of the film which is vast and magnificent, but unlike the equivalent subterranean labyrinth of The Descent never feels claustrophobic or terrifying, perhaps because it is never depicted in full darkness.
Similarly, while lurking in the gloom of the underground the costumes of the demonic brethren are effective, glimpsed above ground in full daylight or in the innocuous surround of the campus library they are stripped of any atmosphere, as though the members of Lordi were stumbling around backstage like some resurrected Spinal Tap, as ludicrous as John and Susan’s decision to take their whining children with them on a hiking trip into the lair of evil.
The Tomb: Devil’s Revenge is on DVD and digital download from 14th September
