THE DEVIL’S TOMB - ***

Directed by Jason Connery. Starring Cuba Gooding Jr, Ron Perlman, Henry Rollins, Ray Winstone, Bill Moseley, Valerie Cruz, Zach Ward, Taryn Manning. Occult Horror, 90 mins, Certificate 18.

Release Date : 2nd May 2011, RRP £12.99.

As an actor Jason Connery has done his fair share of straight to DVD genre movies (c.f. WISHMASTER 3, ALONE IN THE DARK II, BROTHERHOOD OF BLOOD, et al), so it’s fitting that now he’s been given the chance to start directing them too. His first movie behind the camera (PANDEMIC has yet to reach these shores) is this derivative but proficient addition to the growing sub-genre of Iraq-set horror pictures. It’s no world beater, but it gets the job done with some zest and enough well done splatter to make for a decent rental.

A seismic event in the Middle Eastern desert traps scientist Ron Perlman at his classified archaeological “research” site. A crack team is sent in to rescue him, headed by flashback-burdened soldier of fortune Cuba Gooding Jr and also incorporating POSTAL’s Zach Ward, genre regular Jason London and Perlman’s daughter. After stumbling upon a terrified surviving priest (Henry Rollins), and suffering individualised hallucinations featuring creepy kids and naked chicks, this motley crew discover that an ancient fallen angel lurking within the facility is the source the unravelling evil.

An effectively creepy build up exposes one-time Oscar winner Gooding Jr (it was all downhill for him after BOAT TRIP) as merely going through the motions in the role of Generic Badass Hero, but also unveils a once-in-a-lifetime supporting cast. It’s unlikely that you will ever see Ron Perlman (always good value), Ray Winstone (sporting an American accent as Gooding Jr’s best pal), Henry Rollins and Bill Moseley in the same movie ever again. Rollins gets to deliver the key Ranting Exposition speech, while Moseley overcomes his typical typecasting to be unnerving as a crazed, rambling possessee who survives what should be fatal flesh wounds.

Connery’s well paced movie delivers on the visceral front, with projectile acid vomit, throat ripping, broken limbs, boils and slime graphically hitting the screen every few minutes or so. The game cast play the outrageous plot straight and there’s a nice line in alarmist B movie dialogue along the lines of “Wesley is all four horsemen rolled into one!”. The pay off turns out to be ho-hum and it’s not something you’ll remember at the end of the year, but this variation on John Carpenter’s apocalyptic siege movie PRINCE OF DARKNESS (itself heavily indebted to the work of Nigel Kneale) is more satisfying than much of its straight to DVD competition.

Steven West