The Devil's Rock.

I have honestly never heard of this before and a quick Google search would suggest this came out in 2011. However I've seen a few direct-to-disc best of 2012 lists featuring this film, so I thought I'd check it out while doing my own 2012 catch up...since I guess it sort of counts? Enjoy!

I don't think we've ever looked at a piece of New Zealand cinema on here before have we? It's a shame then that we couldn't start on a better example... Really, aside from winning some New Zealand awards and being funded by the New Zealand Film Commission I know very little about this film. But everyone seems to really like it, so let's dig in!

I'm going to say in advanced nazisploitation is a genre I know nothing about. The Devil's Rock is set in the summer of 1994 on the eve of D-Day where allies were carrying out sabotage raids on the German occupied Channel Islands to distract Hitler. However when Ben and Joe arrive on their island, they find more than a gun to blow up. Joe is happy to blow up the gun and go home to medals and women, but Ben has to know who is screaming, has to try and help - and you better believe he'll be pretty quickly left wishing he took Joe's advice. The two soldiers follow the sound of the scream into a German bunker and things start to get fucked up pretty quickly, as the film dives into the world of the supernatural, witchcraft and the occult. This leaves Ben to team up with a Nazi to send a demon back to hell, a demon that the Nazi's originally had plans to use like a secret weapon.

I couldn't find anywhere that had a specific number, but just know The Devil's Rock is a low-budget film and it doesn't look it for a second. For starters, the special effects are absolutely fantastic, this is a triple A looking film in all regards. Secondly, to make a period piece it requires a meticulous eye for detail or the whole illusion is lost, many low budget period pieces are left feeling tacky, but The Devil's Rock remains consistently believable in its period details.

Really director Paul Campion is just a really talented director in general. A bunker is a creepy setting any way, for sure, but it doesn't come prepackaged with quite the level of tension and atmosphere that Campion adds to it. Of course this won't be for everyone, in the modern horror genre that seems closer to a Hollywood blockbuster many more mainstream audiences may very well find The Devil's Rock boring. Personally, even as someone who isn't a mainstream audience member  still found this pretty boring. It takes a certain kind of film watcher to appreciate a horror film that is quite as slow and brooding as this film is, and I'm much too old and jaded to appreciate films like this. At times it feels like the worlds slowest ghost train ride. I can't help but feel, somewhat cynically, that the film takes so long to get started and puts so much into the atmosphere because it blew most of its budget on making it look as spot on as it does.

This of course drops a lot of weight on the actors too, whose performances are largely the centrepiece of the film. Thankfully the cast are great, made up largely of unknowns who have only been in a few titles, it really left me surprised that such talent isn't better known.

Really, it's easy to forget this is a film at all, so much money went into how it looks and so little money went elsewhere it reduces the film to feeling more like a play than anything else, this is minimalist to the extreme. And I can appreciate minimalist filmmaking and the ingenuity that comes with low budgets and all the things people think up to try and keep the costs down but those films don't generally come coupled with a story that promises more than the film can offer. The Devil's Rock clearly knows how far it can realistically reach but still tries to reach further, aiming as high as you can is admirable in the real world but less so in a film, where the budget is straining under the weight. I probably wouldn't have been nearly as disappointed with the film, because it really does look great, if they hadn't also included such an awesome concept they had no means to live up too.

It also means the choice to play for mood rather than thrills means the film is relying on the audience to be frightened by what it has to offer to get its kicks and the film just isn't scary. Honestly, as odd as this will probably sound, the demon is just much too sexy for me to really feel any sense of terror.

So do I recommend it? Most of the time less is more when it comes to horror but The Devil's Rock is about Nazi's raising a sexy demon from hell to seduce and eat its way to Winston Churchill and rather than playing up all the fun that practically writes itself from that plot, The Devil's Rock is a moody, overly serious and incredibly static drama. And for me it just didn't work, all the gloss was just hiding how little was underneath.

Think About It!

-Locke