The Keep

The Nazis seize an ancient Romanian fortress and are predictably eliminated by something potentially more powerful. This is weird, but not weird for weirdness sake. It's undoubtedly a tale of an evil having to deal with another evil, but everything feels so distant and unfamiliar. I don't want to make light of this because it's not a B-movie or anything. It is deadly serious. But it's so hard to like because its characters are cutouts of cliched evil. There's just no one to like in "The Keep". I do like the mystery of the fortress but it's not played up enough. The ancient evil within it is threatening but its depiction is underwhelming. The special effects are mired in '80's tackiness. This is not a movie that I didn't care for, I just don't know how to grasp what its supposed to be. Normally that's an okay thing, but I thought I was watching a potential Halloween horror and my expectations were misplaced.

What an odd, odd movie. Especially coming after Thief, which is out of the gate a stone cold classic, to switch gears and do a horror that has so much wasted potential is baffling. Some of the effects in this were super cool. Like the formation of the monster, very very cool. And so many familiar faces! But a miss. I look forward to hearing the story behind it on next week's Blank Check.