River of Darkness (2010)

Cast: Kurt Angle, S. William Hinzman and Kevin Nash

Writer: Bruce Koehler

Director: Bruce Koehler

I'm a fan of wrestling, I've watched and enjoyed wrestling for years. Our wrestlers have put their bodies on the line for us to give us a good show and some promotions, well just suck at it. Wrestlers seem like very good actors when they're in the ring, backstage area our in a random interview for the promotion. But are they really good actors at all? This is one of many films with wrestlers in it and while some wrestlers can act in every field others just might not be able to or just flat out can't. This film is a prime example of a wrestling starred film gone very wrong and even as a fan of wrestling, I can't take this film serious with it's overtly serious tone and highly dramatic over acted scenes. Now on to what this film is about.

The film is about three dead brothers played by Psycho Sid Vicious, Kevin Nash and Bill Laing. Though the film primarily focuses on Sid and Nash when the three are shown. They're basically seeking revenge on their killers and the descendants of their killers and kill anyone that goes near the river. Kurt Angle stars as the worlds most useless town sheriff, (which i guess is honest and on point with any sheriff so he nailed the role) whom is trying to get down to the point of these murders before learning about the ghosts. He then wanders around town and receives phone calls from his even more useless deputy and get's blamed by everyone for the death of the towns people. One of the towns men played by "Glacier" (yes WCW's Glacier) knows what it is the ghosts want and what will end the curse that seemed to be going on in this viewer's opinion for oh let's say a week. He and some other towns men decide they want to try to put and end so the venture to meet these evil ghosts and give them what it is they came back for, which is of course revenge.

This film is laughably terrible, its extreme sense of over dramatic indulgence reaches a breaking point of being almost satire. Although I am a Kurt Angle fan, his acting was so bland I thought I heard people in the movie chanting "YOU SUCK" and in scenes with him talking to "Glacier" i felt like they were filming a promo for TNA, yes it's true, it's true. The other wrestles just had to do nothing but look "scary" which also was kind of a laugh and "kill" which I'll get to in a second. The rest of the actors/actresses in the film seemed like the were being paid in curds in whey cause there was minimal effort, especially in death scenes. It was just wow, I've seen bad acting, but did the budget go on the wrestlers only?

The death scenes were extremely cheesy, I've seen films with lesser budget and lesser production quality with better, bloodier and more visually realistic looking death scenes than this. There's even cherry red cgi blood in some of them, which adds more to the laugh out loud scale. There isn't much of a body count and most scenes are either left to the imagination or we get to see what's left of the corpse which is kind of boring for a fan that's already pretty boring as far as plot is concerned. But if you have a good sense of humor, like I said it's full of lulz.

The tone of the film is INSANELY dramatic for no reason, even the music. It sounds like they really put effort into emphasizing the terror through the music or the over acted dramatic scenes, which is pretty much the entire film. I have never seen such a film that i felt tried TOO hard and this one did. The shots were stale and were all practically the same in every scene so it set the stale tone of the film even more and all the dark scenes seemed too bright as well. There was so much that could have been done to make the scenes creepier, to make the death scenes cooler, to make the acting better, and that would've been either not making the film or the writer director maybe finding someone that can direct to make his movie? But I do give it to the director he does get some big names and several for this being the second film on his directorial plate and as bad as this film was and is it's godsend next to films like "Tower of Blood".

Overall, this is a bad film, the average film watcher would hate it and TNA fans would probably love it on principle of being "true" fans. But it's in fact a crappy movie, even more so that the cover of the film is the ultimate deceiver cause you see Angel in military garbs and he's the sheriff of some crappy little town. Way to false advertise! I'll more than likely watch more films by Koehler keeping and open mind but with little expectations. I mean after all there are fans out there cause he's still going strong and I'm just a movie fan writing diatribes online. So my opinion is just that, but at least the film made me laugh so I guess any reaction counts for something and that counts for my rating on this.

2/5