The Rizen: Possession

source: The Rizen: Possession

Technically better than the first. Though can't be watched as a stand alone. Watch The Rizen from 2017 and then watch this one. Better than your average Indie Horror. Especially when it comes to writing and acting.

This movie was packed with action & lots of scares, both psychological & jump scares. I would have loved to give this movie a 10/10, but while it is an incredibly engaging film, at the end you just say "WTF"? There is no story coherence and the payoff seemed to be the ending from another movie that got mistakenly spliced into this one! When I saw the opening credits it listed Ade Edmondson, who I loved as Vivian from The Young Ones. I looked for him the entire movie and never saw him. Then upon doing an image search, I realized the both Ade, and I, have gotten really old and look nothing like our younger selves!

Technically the movie is good. Meaning the acting, effects, sound, etc. The story on the other hand is just an incoherent confusing mess. They tried to do too much with too little time. I got the gist of the overall story and what the event was but the stuff in between was ?????

I didn't hate it. It is not fast paced. I had to look at imdb for an explanation. :-) I watched it on Amazon Prime. It is worth streaming but I wouldn't see it at a theatre.

How best to describe this film? How about confusing? Although most of it consists of two distinct groups of people walking around in the dark getting picked off by zombie-like creatures, there have been similar films that score well, but this one fails at every level. Is it science fiction or occult? A bit of both, apparently, and with more background it might have warranted damning with faint praise. Sadly, there is more background. Although it isn't entirely clear from the dialogue, this is actually a sequel. The first film is even worse.

I STILL have NO idea what I just watched! I mean it had some frightening moments, but for the most part didn't make much sense to me. Seems to be 2 points of view, 1 from the Military Squad, and the other from the kid explorers, and neither make much sense!

This is a sequel - there is another Rizen this follows up on - so no pun intended. You do not really have to see the previous movie, but if you do, you will see the connection(s) ... no pun intended here either. The movie looks a lot better than the other movie. The acting is also way better overall. Script seems to be tighter too. What is missing (if you want to call it that), is the silly humor the first movie had. The action steps it up though - and we have two stories interconnected. If you have a heart for low budget Science Fiction Horror movies - you could do far worse than this. I dug it and have to admit, with the limited budget and the location restrictions ... this is quite well done.

For a British psychological horror, this is not too bad. This reminds me of a better film that I regard as a classic called Overlord. It is a given that this film is no where in the same League but it is ok. I would suggest that you watch this film then see Overlord and then you will understand the vast difference between them: From the pretender to the real deal.

Five urban explorers go into "The Facility" which has been abandoned. We discover later in the film the government did occult experiments there. We are introduced to Grace (Harriet Madeley} in that group. We are then introduced to Sgt. Davies (Michael Fatogun ) part of a paramilitary private group who does work for the government. They are to neutralize and extract but are not told what. Davies is given a book to help him. It has occult symbols and is written in Latin, the only language a demon since the beginning of time understands. While there, they encounter blind humans who attack them, who you would think would be easy to kill. It was similar to a zombie film. It combined elements of theology, science, and the occult without going into any detail or mentioning the name of a single demon or even saying something in Latin. It was mostly hide 'n' seek, locate and kill for most of the horror action. Guide: F-word. No sex or nudity.