UnowPriceless
hyped garbage
Kien Navarro
Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.
Loui Blair
It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.
gavin6942
Two CIA agents are sent to Bucharest, Romania to solve a high profile kidnapping. But what they discover is something inexplicable. An evil gargoyle, once thought dead and banished forever, has returned with a vengeance.I do love the use of stock footage from the Jean-Claude Van Damme film "Maximum Risk" (1996) to make the car chase and explosions more exciting. Nice use of the budget, Jim! And actually, when compared to the work Wynorski does today (2012), this is not actually that bad. Not nearly as good as his 1980s work, but not terrible. This must have been about the point where he took a sharp turn downward.
Neil Welch
This is a cheap and cheerful monster movie - you know that going in.And given where it's pitched, it's not too bad. It is, of course, full of the usually idiotic nonsense - cops/agents who empty a magazine into a creature and, having noted that there is no effect whatsoever, decide that the best thing to do (obviously) is empty another magazine. And another. And another. Then you've got the priest who, you just know, must be batting for the other side. Then you've got...Clichés. But you were expecting them, weren't you? The two agents, straightforward X-Files clones, are both somewhat wooden, which is a shame, because most of the rest of the cast isn't bad.The effects themselves are much better than cheap and cheerful CGI often is.This movie gets a resounding "could be much worse" and if that comes across as damning with faint praise then that's unfortunate, because the film is better than that.
ctomvelu-1
Some CIA types travel to Romania to look into a kidnapping. What they find is an ancient evil reborn, in the form of a gargoyle. Not a bad plot, and the movie starts out with a sense of mystery and dread even though we know this resurrected gargoyle is the real culprit. Michael Pare is the lead, and he is as wooden as ever. The gargoyle itself is pretty effective, better than a lot of other CGI creations. The Romanian backdrops are used to decent effect, but in the end the movie proves yet another Sci-Fi Channel dog. There is a gargoyle movie from the 1960s or early '70s with Cornel Wilde that puts this baby to shame, even with far less sophisticated special effects (the gargoyle is a man in a rubber suit, for instance).
Coventry
Bleak but well-intended video horror set in Romania (there's always a sinister story to tell there) and focusing on an ancient type of Catholic demons. The Gargoyles, humanoid monsters with bat DNA, were extinct for almost 500 years but now they're breeding like bunnies again in the catacombs underneath an old Romanian cemetery. A couple of CIA-agents, who're in the country for an American kidnapping-case, go after them. There's not much originality in the script and the poor computer-engineered monster effects fail to impress as well. Still, this is a moderately entertaining B-movie with enthusiastic acting performances and some cheesy dialogue ("It's ALWAYS better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven"). There's a semi-ingenious twist near the end and the gargoyles' breeding process is a clean "Alien" rip-off. Naturally, you can't expect too much from this type of cheap film-making.
