Back in the day, I listed this as one of the worst films I’ve ever seen. It’s kind of become shorthand for “terrible film” in these blogs. I had hoped to have never had this darken my brain again, but needs must. But maybe I exaggerated how bad it was, maybe it’s not actually too awful and now I’m watching it with low expectations I will enjoy it, maybe even really love it. After all, I hated Supalonely back when I first heard it and now I love it more than I love myself (admittedly that’s not hard).

• I am really hoping this film is better than I remember it being. There is a small chance that is the case.
• “History is the truth they want you to remember. Legends are the truths they pushed too far. Myths are the truth they want you to forget”. Yup, the best way to make sure people forget something is to turn it into a myth so that everybody talks about it all the time.
• “There is truth in all things” I KNEW my therapist was right and that everything is my fault.
• I have never seen a person look so uncomfortable playing fetch with a dog.
• Oh, the dog is called “boy”. Evidently the budget for this film didn’t extend to “dog namer”.
• Come on Lee, don’t be negative, the film might still be good.
• Oh fuck off. They cut mid-scene while a kid was about to stand up. Why? That’s an incredibly unnatural place to cut unless you’re REALLY good, and these guys aren’t good. They didn’t even check the colours are the same, it goes from a dark brown to smoked out colour. I’m not even joking, I’ll post two shots here, they happen practically next to each other.

• That, that is unforgivable. There is no excuse. No editor who gets paid should put those two shots together and think that’s acceptable. A first year student film wouldn’t get away with that.
• First death of the movie, the child (going by how this film named the dog, he’s probably called Child) gets killed off-screen. That was when the film lost me when I originally saw it. It seemed too obvious that it was done for lack of budget and because they lacked decent CGI.
• Although considering how badly they fucked up a “person stands up” scene I hate to think what they’d do with CGI.
• It’s fine though, they used sound to convey the death. Well I say death, it sounds like when my dad eats KFC.
• Our first introduction to the main characters, one with his face mostly covered, both walking away from camera.
• Well, they walk away from camera until they need to talk, when they need to talk they stand still because this film couldn’t do tracking shots. I remember that being an issue throughout this film, the static camera during dialogue scenes.
• Oh, we have slight camera movement. Slight. Still not slight enough to not realise how unsteady it is though.
• A standard dialogue scene, this should be impossible to be bad. It’s just people talking while standing still, how can that be messed up?
• Oh, that’s how. These are characters we haven’t met yet, and yet when they start talking, the camera is never on them. It always cuts to them halfway through their line. It’s like they were filming it live and the guy on the board had slow reactions. They also randomly cut to other people for about a second.
• “it feels strange being this far away from the wall” The one that Mexico will pay for?
• Why does that guy look like he has spunk on the front of his armour?
• “keep your eyes open” oh thanks for that, I was just going to walk around carrying this big spear not looking where I’m going.
• Lens flare keeps appearing and disappearing mid-shot. JJ Abrams would have an anger wank.
• “We’ll rest here”. Erm, you’ve been standing still, sitting down and eating in that spot for the last 5 minutes. Is that not resting?
• “we don’t want the gods to curse us with snow” As someone who is currently watching this film, I know all about curses.
• “it’s not the fighting I fear, it’s the unexpected” how about unexpected fighting?
• I don’t remember any of these characters names so I’m just going to refer to who they look like poundland versions of: Zack Gibson, Generic bald man, Michael Douglas, Karen Taylor, Nick Helm.
• They get attacked by the natives. Oh no, the invading army is being attacked by the people they are there to kill, this is such a horrible thing to happen.
• Phew, the invaders one, massacring the people who call this country home. Yay?
• Drone shot. That’s almost film-making there.
• Oh, and now we have bad ADR.
• “I am Germanic, not Pict” “you seem to know a lot about Picts for someone who’s not one”. Because nothing is a better sign of guilt than “knowing something”.
• “footprints of animals, wolves, men” Manbearwolf!
• “you can’t trust a Germanic”. Just say German. You’re speaking in modern English, you don’t care that much about anachronisms.
• Also, that’s racist.
• “when you look at me, what do you see?” Well I can’t get past that eye make-up to be honest.
• “but when we draw swords” You’re supposed to be soldiers, why are you sitting around drawing pretty pictures with crayons? This is why the Roman empire failed.
• A shaky cam shot of the fucking moon. Could you not get a tripod for that? Seriously.
• “why would it tear them apart like that?” YOU’RE TEARING ME APART LISA!
• “looks like the claws of a wolf” “what wolf walks on two legs?” Wolf from Gladiators?
• “it was so fast and horrible” title of my sex tape.
• “we take this down for the glory of Rome, for our glory”. Oh honey, you ain’t got no glory if you’re in this film.
• Battle-trained soldiers there standing in that well-known formation of “all facing in the same direction, with the shields being held to the side, leaving your stomach exposed”.
• This is such an exciting scene, people standing around, doing nothing.
• “hunting is our speciality” mine’s risotto. Some may argue it’s less useful, but out of me and every Roman soldier, I’m the one with a high score on Pac-Man.
• Wooo we get to see The Orb. Or in technical terms “stand in a circle”, via flashback. I mean, there was a battle scene earlier that you could have demonstrated it in. And it would have been much more natural than “remember when we used The Orb before and it saved us?” like some lame clip show episode.
• They’ve been standing in the dark now for at least 10 minutes. It’s a sub-90 minute film. I’ll leave it up to you to ascertain whether I thought that was a good use of time.
• The “werewolves” move too fast to be seen, only made clear by camera swooshes that are too quick for any of those trained soldiers to see them. Except for when we actually see them, when they’re just running back and forth like drunk students.
• There is no way they are fast enough to drag someone away without you being able to slice at them.
• Phew, they’ve stopped standing around in the dark. They’re now walking in the dark.
• “A little bit of snow and that thing is still out there”. Wouldn’t snow on the ground make it easier to track something?
• It’s now daylight, they’re still standing around. Have they been like that all night?
• Her make-up is doing a stunning job of staying streak-free during all this.
• “there was more than one, I swear it”. Well, yeah. We saw three of them at the same time. Was there any doubt there was more than one?
• “That’s not the Roman way, we offer peace first, war second”. By peace they mean “allow yourself to be ruled by us”. So it’s not really peace, just a decision on how to accept invasion. If I went up to someone and said “Give me your money or I’ll shoot you in the face”, the fact they handed over their money and I didn’t shoot them does not make it a peaceful transaction.
• “I thought I saw something in the trees”, yeah they’re called leaves mate.
• “if we can train them to fight for us, or unleash them on our enemy” I’d argue those two things are very similar.
• “that thing took us all on and we barely survived” and you think you could train it? Are you an idiot?
• “I’d say the gods are angry”. Why, have they been watching this film too?
• Apparently being sent to Britain was basically a punishment as it was such an awful and desolate place. Thus proving that the Romans made it to Rochester.
• “who would live here?” SPONGE BOB SQUARE PANTS
• “He knows something” *five seconds pause” “I do”. Well that was worth the wait.
• One of the women strip off and we have one of the few things worth watching this film for. No, not those, you perverts. The make up. She has scratches on her back and they look magnificently brutal and real.
• “there is an evil in the black forest” That’s just what they tell you to keep you away from the gateau.
• “More ramblings from the old man, should have killed him”. And how does that tie into the “we offer peace” thing?
• “then why did you choose to be here?” “I didn’t, the council chose for me”. Bloody council, did they catch you putting the bins out on the wrong day again?
• “this is insane” he says crying, then immediately is back to normal.
• “What kind of a man are you?” A twat.
• “these things move so fast” they don’t though, we’ve seen them.
• Oh good, more standing around. This time with added spittle on beard.
• No idea what frame rate they were using but some of these shots are jerkier than Jamaican chicken.
• I think not-Michael Douglas died. He got separated from the group. Because that’s something a highly trained group does when they are walking slowly, lose people.
• “he was hurt by the thing when we were in the orb” that was ages ago though wasn’t it?
• Oh good, bourne-style shaky cam of someone standing still. Exciting!
• “You don’t want to do this?” what’s that, watch this film? I’m well aware of that thank you.
• That snow cleared up fucking quickly by the way. Almost fully green scenery now.
• Wth is that accent? That could be said at almost any point during this film by the way.
• “you have always been the better soldier” if only we saw some evidence of that. Like start in Rome, with him getting a commendation or something, then land at the English shore after hearing reports of violent attacks on the soldiers stationed there. Despite being the invading army, it nearly always feels like they’re on home turf in this film. Probably because they all have English accents.
• They’re not werewolves, they’re just naked people. Not even hairy.
• “they want us to turn” It’s normally bears that do that (or otters, or cubs), and usually only with consent.
• Oh no, thingy died. He was stabbed by what’s his name.
• Thankfully it’s near the end so I should mention the other things that have been prevalent throughout: bad performances, different background audio between two shots set in the same scene, heavy breathing.
• The surviving Romans are all banging. Not in a sexy way.
• We finally get our first clear shot of a werewolf. It’s a normal person, only with dirt, and bad fake teeth. And they’ve gone from “we’ve stabbed them but we can’t harm them” to three of them being killed in quick succession really easily.
• And the bald guy is now dead. That’s all the men dead now.
• Ohhhhh I remember how this film ends now. It turns out women can’t become werewolves so if they survive the bites they’re fine. Neat idea, never explained.
• “we do not fight with wolves”, smart, using swords is a much smarter idea.
• Yup I was right, the women don’t turn. This is explained off camera, because the camera is far more focused on seeing people have this explained to them than have us see the person speaking it.
• And this ends with a knife in the head. Sadly not in mine, so I will still remember it exists.
• The cast for this film included the director and the editor, explains a lot. Helps contribute to the “student film” feel of it, only this was not student, this was a professional film. And it fucking sucked.

I stand by my original review