This review of Devil's Knight was originally meant to go up last Friday but personal events led to me deciding to take some time off away from my blog to have some 'me' time. Having been less than ten minutes away from the film's conclusion, I couldn't really not finishing watching this one at the very least, I may well write another blog post or two this rainy weekend. Devil's Knight is a fantasy horror film directed and co-written by Adam Werth (Bermuda Island) that appears to be set during some type of time period similar to real world Medieval times in which monsters roam the lands. Featuring a huge cast of characters and some mainly good looking creature effects, this was an enjoyable fantasy piece.
This takes place in the realm of Veroka, a place where deadly monsters roam the lands. King Samuel (Kevin Hager - Bloodthirst, Night of the Tommyknockers) has been having particular trouble with a creature known as the Bone Devil (Ben Stobber - Bloodthirst, Bermuda Island), with many of his soldiers having fallen prey to the beast. In desperation, he decides to hire a group of monster hunting mercenaries to take it out. Things seem to be going to plan, but political intrigues and deadly secrets at the King's castle threaten the lives of both the mercenary group and his own people alike.
This features a plot device I always am a fan of. A strange scarred man (John Wells - Arena Wars, Bermuda Island) arrives at a camp in the dead of night. He reveals himself to have been Sigurd - one of the mercenary soldiers, and the film takes the form of a story he is re-telling. Every now and again during the movie events will stop and go back to this camp, before finally heading back for one last time at the end. I thought this would be a more straight forward story than it turned out to be, with the quest to defeat the Bone Devil seemingly dealt with around halfway into the film. The action then moves to the castle where there is a large cast of not very nice people. Monsignor Mustela (Greg Tally - Arena Wars, Craving) is perhaps the chief dodgy person here, especially when it comes to the fact he has a monster secretly chained up in the castle dungeons. I say secret, but there are many flawed characters at the castle who are also privy to this fact, including twisted jester Culper (Alexander Hauck - Bloodthirst, Macabre Mountain), and even Princess Sabine (Chupacabra Territory), someone who seemed set up to be a protagonist, but is then dragged down due to intense flaws.
The mercenaries become collective protagonists and I did enjoy how tight-knit they all seemed. There were plenty of stereotypes, but also some decent characters to be found among them, chiefly the group leader Mathias (Robert Standley) and the heavily armoured John, who had an interesting backstory for who they really were). My favourite character though had to be Guard Captain Baldur (Kevin Sorbo - Without a Body), I loved this character in every scene he appeared in.
Thankfully the majority of the creature effects were quite impressive. These are people wearing monster suits, but they looked effective for the most part and made for some exciting scenes. I say mostly, as unfortunately, one of the more integral monsters didn't look as good, it gave me vibes of a villain from Might Morphin Power Rangers and stood out in a bad way as a result. Look past that and the other creature designs are cool, as are the scars on the characters that mostly look great. There is lots of action here, both with people battling creatures, as well as people battling each other. Fighting mainly takes the form of sword fighting, always was fun to see, and had some decent sound effects to sell this type of combat.
I enjoyed this fantastical, cast heavy horror film. Plenty of action and a story that is forever moving forward, this was only let down by the occasional less impressive moments. I am also not sure of the abruptly chaotic ending that changed track so fast that it almost came off as amusing. Devil's Knight is now available to watch on Prime Video.
SCORE:
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