Disappointment for a huge fan!

Better Late Then Never

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Daemonium is a strange film. It sets out to do something ambitious: tell a story about good versus evil in a strange world slightly different to our own in an inventive way. Does it succeed? Sort of.The story-telling here is non-linear, and jumps around. This can be brilliant if done well. In this case, it sort of works, however the pieces of the story don't quite fit together at the end, which denies the audience the moment of revelation when everything fits together. At the same time, there clearly is a set timeline there, which leaves the audience frustrated by the plot rather than with a sense of wonder at the bizarreness of it all, as with Un Chien Andalou.Some of the visuals are great. There's one scene where a character has a vision of what has happened in the past, and the way it's shot actually manages to emulate the visual feel of TV programs from the past, such as Star Trek. The visual theme also feels consistent throughout the film.Most of the film is okay. The acting is all either good or okay, with none standing out as particularly bad. Some of the fight scenes are entertaining and exciting. However, towards the end the quality of these scenes begins to drop significantly. The big final fight scene in particular is a big let-down, looking more comical than dramatic.The camera-work needs improving. There is an overuse of Dutch angles, particularly in the opening scene, some of the editing is too choppy, and shakey camera shots happen far too often. So overall, I'm not sure about this one. It has some interesting ideas and has the guts to try them, but it's let down in several places by bad camera-work, or plot inconsistencies. So I give it a 6/10, because there were a lot of good and inventive ideas about both the story and execution. However, not all of these paid off, and other elements, such as the final battle, weren't given the attention they needed.

I actually wanted to give this movie a 7.5, and not an 8, but the IMDb system doesn't let you do that, so I rounded up, because for all its many problems, this movie won me over. You'll notice that the other reviewers complained about the lack of coherence in the story line. I get that, and I agree with them. This is, in some ways, an awful movie. But it's awful in interesting ways...it's the movie that the first "Underworld" COULD have been. The deal-breaker for most people is going to be that you are dropped into the middle of a situation with very little backstory or exposition or character set up, and you never really get anything more than the barest sketches of anything resembling that as the movie progresses. And characters the movie has been following die abruptly and the movie then switches to OTHER characters who pull out new abilities and fighting moves and backstories from nowhere, with very little justification or setup. So the end result is like watching a series of "Metal Hurlant" episodes, or (as one earlier reviewer cleverly noticed) extended versions of the old animated "Aeon Flux" cartoons.You never know quite what's going on, or why people are doing what they do, and the fact that one actress plays several different roles (with the barest throwaway description of "synthetic combat robots" or some such silliness) only adds to the confusion. However, if you can put up with that, you can groove on some wildly inventive character designs, costumes, makeup, and fight scenes. And for all the lack of actual character development in the screenplay, the actors pump huge amounts of energy into filling out their cardboard roles. "Falcinelli", who seems to be sort of the "hero" in this, is especially good. All you ever learn about him is that he's a low level street wizard who mostly uses a Tarot deck to work his magic and is something of a scoundrel who enjoys cigars...but man, he is fun to watch in action. So: should you watch this? I can't tell what kind of mood you will be in when you start watching, so I can't tell whether it will pull you in or annoy the hell out of you. But you might like it.

In Germany there is a saying, that goes (translated): "this seems Spanish to me". You say that if you don't understand something. Either literally or mostly metaphorically speaking. In this case, both can be true. It's Science Fiction, that is something everyone can agree on. It has a lot of CGI in it and good fights evil.It also has someone trying to take over the world, a McGuffin (for better or worse) and some action. Also character changes that are so mental that you'll have a hard time to follow them. Let alone the "story". Not to mention the robots/humans and different versions of them. Motivations? Well, who cares right? You do? Maybe not watch this then ...

Directed by Pablo Parés, co-director of the low budget Plaga Zombie splatter series, Daemonium came as something of a surprise to me in terms of overall look and feel, the movie featuring impressive production values, with slick cinematography and lighting, inventive costume and prop designs, and some fine digital effects trickery.All of this counts for nothing, however, when the narrative is such a total mess.I wish I could give you some idea of the plot for Daemonium, but I have to confess that at no point did I have a clue what was happening (IMDb's plot summary, presumably written by the film's makers, does little to clear up matters). The film opens with a hot chick who turns out to be a robot (the same actress also appears as a bad-ass angel without wings). There's a bad guy called Razor who has a big scar on his face. Razor's pregnant wife becomes a PVC clad ninja with some mean rope tricks. A wizard called Fulcanelli pulls off some serious David Blaine shizz. A white-haired woman in a plastic mask wields a cool light-sabre style weapon. And an ugly demon comes through a portal and kills people. But what ties these characters together is completely unfathomable, the unnecessarily showy editing doing little to help matters.Trust me when I say that, at an excruciating two hours long, the whole shambolic wreck proves a real test of one's resolve.