Must-Watch SFF: Orcs!

• by Gitabushi

With my daughter home for the summer, I end up actually watching visual entertainment.  We browse Amazon Prime for movies that include topics I can use to highlight conservative principles and the values I want them to learn.

But we also encounter movies and television shows I’ve never heard of.

This one just looked stupid.  I had to watch the trailer to see just how stupid it was.

Surprise! It wasn’t stupid.

It was actually a very enjoyable movie, with a solid premise, good writing and decent acting.

It’s always hard for me to do a review without giving away spoilers, so I tend to focus on descriptions of what the author (or movie, in this case) does well, what it doesn’t do well, and my reaction to various extremely-generally-described elements.

I’m probably going to have to do that again. But bear with me. And see the movie, if you can (free on Amazon Prime).

The premise of this movie is that orcs are real, but they’ve been bottled up (suspended animation? Dimensional portal?) in a subterranean realm since mythical times.  They nearly obtained their release decades ago, but were stopped by chance.  Recent activities have opened their path to the surface Earth again, and the orcs are now making their best attempt to destroy or subjugate the human race.

What this movie is not:

A comedy, although the trailer makes it seem like one (the canoe scene isn’t as funny in context as it is in the trailer).  But it is funny at times.

A campy movie, although it has some camp.  The movie escalates in seriousness and in the stakes as it runs, as a good story should.

A professional movie, although the special effects were better than I would have expected.  But they were clearly on a tight budget to get things done.

A good Bad movie.  Because it simply isn’t a Bad Movie.  Okay, okay, it could be seen as a bad movie due to its production values and lack of brand-name actors.  But if you can suspend your disbelief for the cheesier aspects, honestly: the stronger elements of the movie make it a good movie.  Not a great movie, but a good one.  Sort of. Almost.

What this movie is:

A very well-written, decently well-directed, decently-well acted movie.  It has a decent premise, and takes the premise seriously.  The actors over-act at times to fill space.  The moments they try to conceal their limited budget are obvious (“thousands” of orcs marching by seems likely to be a half-dozen running in a circle with obvious sound effects), but done as well as you can expect.  The overall impact is better than most of the fanfic movies I’ve seen on YouTube.  It drew me in, made me care about the outcome.  The climax battle wasn’t over as quickly as you might expect, heightening the sense of dread from the orcs’ overwhelming force.  The writing, plot, and acting made me care about the actors.  The characters had depth (the GS-9 rivalry was spot on), and the main character grew/changed throughout the story in a plausible manner.

A fairly good Pulp Revolution movie.

I’ve often run to IMDB to find out what other movies a set of actors have been in. This is the first movie I’ve ever watched that made me run to Twitter immediately after to find the main actors’ twitter handles to praise them.

Watch it as soon as possible, and leave your comments.

If it’s not on Amazon Prime anymore, it can be watched here.