Hero of the Underworld (2016) Directed by John Vincent




"Hero of the Underworld", so what is this movie? A superhero movie? An action flick? No, it's a meandering drama about a terribly uninteresting character and a whole bunch of drama that never works out as anything convincing, let alone engaging.

I actually got a "The Room" kind of vibe from this movie at times, which of course isn't a very positive thing to say. It's an obviously cheap film, made by a bunch of mostly inexperienced persons, both in front of- and behind the cameras. Yes, it's a very amateurish looking- and feeling movie at times. Nothing wrong with cheap film-making but you need to have something in the movie to compensate for this, or do anything to make use of its own limitations for instance, in a clever and creative way. In this case the movie does absolutely nothing. It doesn't have a very appealing style and atmosphere and it doesn't feature the right type of story to make up for its weaknesses either.

As a matter of fact, the story is actually still the main thing that makes this such an incredibly pointless and terribly unappealing movie to watch. It's really mostly a movie about nothing. It's unclear what this movie is really trying to say with its main story, or if it's even trying to say anything at all. I actually genuinely do think that the movie and the movie makers themselves truly believed that they were making a thought-provoking and deep drama, about many serious issues, such as death and drug abuse. The movie however has no idea how to handle any of these times ever in an engaging or even remotely interesting and credibly kind of way.

Things are made all the more annoying and worse by the fact that the movie is a needlessly slow one. Scenes just go on and on and the movie as a whole feels far too stretched out. It besides doesn't ever appears that the movie is heading anywhere interesting with any of its themes and story lines, so finishing this movie is more of a task and an endurance than anything else really.

There is just something terribly unconvincing about the whole premise and main story of the movie. It's not just the writing, it's everything really. The casting, the acting itself, the directing, none of it ever seems to come together. The main character- and therefore the movie as a whole, falls incredibly flat because of that. His motivations, his actions, it never comes across as anything too convincing and despite the fact that the movie spends a lot of time with just its one main character, played by Tom Malloy, you still never really seem to get to know him, or ever remotely start to care about anything that happens to him.

Chances are that you are not even ever going to come across this movie. Be thankful for that.

4/10

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