Friday, July 13, 2012

MONGOLIAN DEATH WORM: CGI STRIKE AGAIN...BADLY


How can you go wrong with a movie that has a title like this? I mean who DOESN'T want to see a movie with a death worm? Better yet that the title creature comes from Mongolia! My honest guess is that most people (especially younger ones) have no idea where Mongolia is let alone why it would be plagued by death worms. That's a good thing too because most of this movie looks like it was shot in a woods near the film makers home rather than Asia.

An American oil company (it's always nice to have a convenient bad guy in films) is using a new technique to drill in a region of Mongolia. Unfortunately when they do so they awaken a den of death worms, huge slime covered creatures with retractable shooting tongues that swat out to catch their prey. So far so good. Now let's toss some more plots into this.

A rogue archeologist named Daniel is on the run from some smugglers he's apparently crossed paths with. They apparently were helping fund his search for the tomb of Genghis Khan.  Only his friend, a local policeman, saves him. But you know what they say about payback. When a truck transporting two physicians involved in Doctors Without Borders to a small village breaks down and the policeman has another crime to handle, Daniel is recruited to take them to the village.

Complications arise in various ways. Daniel and his doctors are captured by the man trying to find him. They are only saved when the death worms intervene and the bad guys are killed. And if we didn't have enough plots to follow, it turns out that the man overseeing the oil drilling plant was also waiting for the bad guys to transport an illegal shipment he has waiting at the plant. Of course this is where everyone eventually arrives including the death worms.

The story has way too much going on here. The acting is standard but not outstanding. Then again you can only do so much with what you're given. Worst of all is the effects. If this movie wasn't made specifically for SyFy then I would be surprised. It features that same poor CGI creature of the week effects seen in so many of their made for cable movies.

While this isn't the worst movie ever made, it is pretty bad. If you find that it's the last movie on the rental shelf then I would suggest you pull out a deck of cards and play solitaire.

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