DEAD WRONG // A FILM REVIEW OF BEHEMOTH
The new VFX heavy indie thriller BEHEMOTH starts off with Joshua Rivington (Josh Einsenberg) taking a run along some backroads near his home when a creature begins to chase him. There's no build up to this moment; it comes out of nowhere and he scrambles to run away to safety. The creature looks great, terrifying in its menace and the viewer is immediately forced to guess what and who the monster is. This sudden jump into a monster chase throws you off balance, and not in a good way. It almost immediately feels like there's a scene missing, it feels too sudden. And it only gets worse from there.
Joshua is a whistleblower who blew the whistle on a giant chemical company. He once worked for them and he's sure that they are responsible for his daughter's terminal illness. So he spends every moment trying to go down the rabbit hole and find clues, witnesses, anything to take them down. He spends so much time doing this that he's completely neglected his wife and, worst of all, his daughter who lies in intensive care. When he, along with two of his friends (Jennifer Churchich, Richard Wagner), confront Luis Woeland the head of scientific research divisions (Paul Statman), things go south quick and Josh ends up getting shot - and Luis gets kidnapped. While they're on the run, strange things keep appearing to Josh and his friends. Strange creatures seems to be either following them or all around them. What exactly are they, and are they just in their heads or is an even greater danger lying next to them?
There are some truly impressing and truly terrifying visual effects in BEHEMOTH, proof that the VFX team really took their time making the film look as good as it does. So it's an even bigger letdown that the entire rest of the film is a flaming hot mess. The dialogue is horrible, the acting is laughable in almost every sense and the direction of the film is confusing, to say the very least. The entire film screams "Hey, let's all get together and make a film," which can be a totally charming experience of an indie production. However, it's clear almost everyone is in way over their head here. Other than the special effects & look of the film, which again is great, there's nothing positive to say about this train wreck of a film. For a film about the evil in humans, the real evil is having to sit through this film and try to make sense of how everything fails except for the effects. That's truly a scary effect indeed.
GRADE: D-
WRITTEN BY Derrick Ligas, Peter Szewczyk DIRECTED BY Peter Szewczyk STARRING Josh Eisenberg, Paul Statman, Jennifer Churchich, Richard Wagner, Whitney Nielsen, Vadym Krasnenko. AVAILABLE ON DIGITAL PLATFORMS AUGUST 27th.