The Quantum Devil is a H.P Lovecraft inspired horror that at the very least has a great look and style to it. Directed by Larry Wade Carrell (Girl Next), who also co-wrote this, this film mainly suffers from an unlikeable cast and too much reliance on pseudo-scientific babble to carry its confusing plot. Apologies if the synopsis isn't completely accurate, it was a bit hard to follow!
Four gifted but troubled experts are invited to the remote home of a disgraced scientist, Dr. Richard Cernovich (Neil Dickson - Ms. Marvel TV series) in eastern Europe to be given the opportunity of a lifetime. They include quantum physicist Luke (Tyler Tackett - Renaissance of the Dead), chemist Brad (Edward Apeagyei), empath Sophie (Tamara Radovanovic), and former medical student Ivanna (Ariadna Cabrol). Cernovich reveals he had been working on a method by which people could travel to the quantum realm with full control over their body and actions, he wants the four's help in perfecting his experiment, with the reward being not only recognition for their contribution to sciences, but also enough money for them to begin new lives (due to each of them having done some pretty terrible things in their pasts). They agree, but before they begin Cernovich is called away on business. In short time they complete the equations and test it out on themselves. Initially it appears to have failed, but as strange occurrences begin to ramp up, they realise that maybe they had been successful after all, and may in fact be in the terrifying quantum realm.
This starts off well, following Luke as he travels by taxi one dark and stormy night to a seemingly abandoned factory. There is some nice foreshadowing in the form of graffiti of a tentacled creature, and then when he states he used to work at the fictitious Miskatonic University from the works of Lovecraft I was certainly interested. It soon becomes clear there are no saints here, instead all characters are kind of evil, and are aware they are. It is soon established via some exposition from Cernovich about just what their crimes are, which was a neat part of the film featuring flashbacks playing over his narration. When the film begins in earnest however I soon got lost in all the probably made up terms, with the group talking amongst themselves using so many random scientific terms and ideas that I just could not follow what was happening. Despite all the techno-speak, this devolved into something that outside of all the hard to follow speech, was basically kind of like A Nightmare on Elm Street situation of them being trapped in a kind of dreamworld where their past sins come back to literally haunt them.
It is this second half of the film where more happens, each of the four characters get their own little segments where they discover death isn't the end for them. This has some nice special effects for some scenes, such as a character who gets skinned alive, and some not so great effects, as at times there is the appearance of tentacles that had an odd cartoony look to them. The actors were fine, it was just hard to feel much for any of them, especially Luke, who was made into the protagonist. Dickson's role called for him to be very over the top, leading to lots of scenes of people laughing evilly for not much reason. There were a few fun side roles, such as Mehmet Cerrahoglu (Baskin) who played a Knick Knack type role to Dickson's Scaramanga, and legend Robert Englund (A Nightmare on Elm Street film series) in a small voice only role.
This had a great visual look to it, but I found the plot hard to follow and not really that interesting. I am often a fan of style over substance, but there wasn't enough here for me to really grip onto, The Quantum Devil wasn't a dull film, but nor did I ever find myself that invested into the story it was trying to tell.
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