Tomb Invader

A playful, lively take on the smash-and-grab archaeology genre, Tomb Invader sends millennial Californian academics to save a cultural artifact from nasty capitalists. It's got nice visuals, apt music score, and a witty script. This is not a documentary. And you don't come to The Asylum for art films. Just saying...

I'm giving it a 2/10 (just) for the story. I won't spoil anything at all. To keep it short: you are better off getting a kick out of playing the first Tomb Raider (1996) video game than this film.

This is pretty seriously probably one of the worse movies I've ever seen. It's like a film student's junior year project. But then that student went on to drive fork lifts because they had no talent. A few of the actors could probably make it in * but it would be a reach for their range. The actors recite the script like they are reading it off a sheet of paper leading most scenes to come off like completely inorganic. Every death the actors respond to as a group of sociopaths continuing on with no regards. I assume this is what you get from an ad on Craigslist. To save you time I'll sum up the plot for you. After some aged lady and her idiot friend watch a poor guy die with a spear to the chest, they turn around completely unphased to only die moments later. Fast forwarding, some sorority girl slam piece takes her fat lesbian and black friends to China (i.e. the local railroad hiking trail). They meet up with a "billionaire" and his Jansport book bag to find the jade key. Along the way they meet the leading man who clearly only acting after a failed bar tending career. Wandering through the woods they find some asian fellows who threaten the trip with better acting skills (possibly due to the fact they don't use english). Eventually they reach the temple and smart smart black guy dies. Fat lesbian takes it hard and shows the only emotional response to death the movie will see. Slam piece find the jade heart. The billionaire then using the power of his Jansport backpack overpower the rest of the group to take the jade heart quickly unleashing some warrior guy. Slam piece and bar tender quickly defeat him then find the Excalibur (apparently props wasn't trying hard). Billionaire then somehow gets lost and then dies in a rock tumble. The rest of the crew makes it out and give the asian fellows Excalibur. The movie then closes on Slam piece teaching what apparently is a community college history class.

Not all the acting was poor and for the money they did a nice job with what they had to work with and to be honest it actually beats a lot of the big mega budget movies into a cocked hat like the awful Pacific Rim or the new Keanu Movie Siberia. So many critics who probably never watched it but saw the Asylum name or watched 5mins and judged. Its a TV style movie for a wet Sunday afternoon and you will not be disappointed - Asylum movies are all about a little bit of fun and poking the eye of the big blockbusters with their mega money movies and they poked well with this one. It will make you smile, maybe laugh a little and in this day and age of depressing movie fair that cant be a bad thing! Its not Lara Croft more Lara Soft but in this case it is what it says on the tin!

Asylum mock busters are hit and miss. Sometimes they make a good campy disaster film with the same plot of all of their films and other times it was just a very bad effort. This was a sad effort. Is there such a thing as a "fake film?" In the CG lost city of Lintoy, China, two bad actresses die...killed by the tomb critic. We then jump years later where daughter Alabama Channing, no apologies, (Gina Vitori) is introduced in an Indian Jones type of scene. This woman who looks more like a frail Ally McBeal, beats up a few guys. Her fights are done 80's Claude Van Damme style, fighting one guy at a time while the rest of the bad guys watches. A split would have made the film. The whole plot was boring. The tomb was clearly a set and it was well lit with background lighting which begs why they were carrying such small flashlights. I was bored to tears. Guide: No swearing, sex, or nudity.

Nearly two decades on and B-move factory The Asylum is still going strong. This time, they cash in on the Tomb Raider reboot with this 'adventure film' about a female archaeologist on the hunt for an ancient Chinese treasure that somehow links back to her dead mother and the future of China itself. Pitiful is more than descriptive enough of everything here, but then this wouldn't be much of a review if I just stopped there. The acting is uniformally poor all around, with everyone either doing goofball or hardbitten, though Bowling does try as the plucky best friend. The production values, as is the Asylum's calling card, are beyond amateur, with dull SouCal forests... err, I mean ' Asian jungles', stock footage of China aplenty and Playstation 2-worthy CGI for the 'death traps', like a giant spike roll that's SO not like a famous death trap from another adventure film. As a small positive, at least the sound mix was compotent. The narrative stinks of a first draft, loaded with rambling scenes, bland dialogue and poorly realised characters with little identity. Everything is exposition and, surprise surprise, that means the movie is more interested in tedious talking than treasure hunting or delving into Alabama's connection with her mother and how it shaped her. There's also barely any action or much 'tomb invading' either, aside from the opening and the very end. Simply put, Tomb Invader is balls. It's sloggish, it's moronic and it's incredibly boring. Everything is so tacky and lazy yet so self-serious that you can't even laugh at it in that quintessential 'so bad it's good' way that is the hallmark of the more enjoyable B and Z movies.