Guts 'n balls, no brain, fake heart

Rating: 3/10 (7 March 2013)

The trajectory of Neil Marshall's output follows - not surprisingly - a smoothly descending curve. It starts relatively high with "Dog Soldiers", a rather likable small eclectic werewolf horror, both witty and gritty, including a delicious postscript joke. With his next picture, aptly named "The Descent", Marshall moves to the quasi United States and, leaving his sense of humour at home, descends into the more profitable realm of mainstream shockers. He remains faithful to the well-tried plot : this time it's a bunch of bored, adrenalin-hungry female aliens who invade the underground territory of mutant "natives", thus making themselves to titbits for creatures who prefer human flesh to adrenalin. The director's heart seems to contradict his critical standpoint - it's rather with the neocolonialist chicks (= the viewer's Ego ?), portraying the other side (= repressed Id ?) as repulsive lower beings deserving no mercy when confronted eye to eye.
However deep the Appalachian caves in "The Descent" might be, Marshall proves that a director of his calibre can get even lower - returning to the Highlands of Scotland for a change, where his fourth and last cinematic massacre, "The Centurion", takes place. It's not hard to predict what expects us here. A unit of Roman legionaries, veritable vessels of testosterone indeed, who have taken part in the Great Conquest of Cavemanland, are bound to be slaughtered by native Picts led by a female avenger gone berserk.
The movie, in the wake of its countless Hollywood big brothers, typically sits on the fence : the makers themselves seem to be drunk to near-unconsciousness by the machismo violence which they flaunt while exposing our voyeuristic, narcissistic and xenophobic selves. Moreover, they offer not a single pleasant surprise, just all imaginable clichés in full display ; tasteless casting, lacklustre script/dialogues, obligatorily muted colours, CGI blood spurts - signature of illiterates for a long time now - etc., etc. In the final third "Centurion" betrays even itself, changing horses from the naturalistic brute raven stallion to the white horse of a ludicrous sentimental romance.
Despite all flaws, there's at least one redeeming quality to Marshall's flick : it does not pretend to be what it isn't - as for example Refn's "Valhalla Rising" did.