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Writer's pictureMatt McNeal

Don't Kill It



 

I want everybody to take a good look at that picture. That is a little girl with black eyes, wielding an ax and flying through the air. Does that sound hilariously terrible? It should, because it is. Now what if I told you that Don''t Kill It was that hilariously terrible throughout. It would sound like a fun time right? Well, if I did tell you that I'd be a dirty liar because the truth is that while there are hilarious moments like this in the movie, they are few and far between leaving the rest of the space to be filled with terrible.

"But wait," I can hear you yell at your screen "why are you giving us your final thoughts now? You're spoiling the whole review!"  Well, you have a point. Let me rewind and start over. I'd say beware of spoilers but let's face it, spoilers don't matter for this movie.


Don't Kill It is a 2016 (or 2017 depending on where you look) action/fantasy/horror movie directed by Mike Mendez and co-written by Dan Berk and Robert Olsen. If those name's don't sound familiar there's probably a reason for that. It stars Dolph Lundgren for some reason. I didn't know he was still making movies. I was recommended to watch this movie by fellow NBRR&M member Shane Cronican who, at the time of this writing should also have an article up on the Man Corner with his take of Don't Kill It from an action perspective. I went into this movie completely blind and after watching it I decided to see if it had a score on Rotten Tomatoes. What I found left me shocked and appalled. Not only was it sitting at a more than reasonable 35% rotten from the audience, but it has a baffling 100% fresh from critics (based on 9 reviews)! WHAT!? I guess this just goes to show you that critics are stupid and should never be trusted. That being said, let me criticize the ever-loving snot out of this movie.

The whole reason I agreed to watch Don't Kill It was because it was pitched to me as a horror movie. The first five minutes of the movie had me hoping that was the direction it was going to go. It didn't dawn on me that Shane is the one who recommended it so I should have known better. But the first five minutes were genuinely entertaining! We start off with some random hunter who sends his dog after something and then immediately starts calling for his dog like he lost it, whatever. The dog ends up attacking the hunter, then that dude runs out of the woods into some random house and starts killing everyone. It's bloody and gruesome, and the movie has given you literally no explanation at this point. One of the family members kills the hunter, only for that family member to run into the next house down and start killing THOSE PEOPLE! It was a super interesting concept. Is it a virus? Something in the food and/or water? Some kind of cult brainwashing?

Nope. Demons. You heard me right. Demons. And Dolph Lundgren is a demon hunter.

Okay movie, you officially lost me. We're only ten minutes into the movie at this point and the movie has ground to almost a complete stop. We get a bunch of boring characters played by terrible actors who deliver some of the worst expositional dialogue I've ever heard for what seems like an eternity, and the movie clocks in under an hour and a half! There are no scares for the rest of the film, no tension, and barely any fun. The next big scene that actually felt fun doesn't hit until almost an hour into the movie where the whole town is having a meeting and the demon shows up and starts killing everyone. I should probably explain the reason why the movie is called "Don't Kill It" is because if you kill the body the demon is possessing then it possesses you.

So we have this scene at the town hall where the demon is killing everyone and people keep killing the demon so it's jumping bodies all over the place while Dolph Lundgren is trying to capture it. It was over the top and ridiculous and I'll admit, that scene was a lot of fun because of it. Unfortunately, that scene only lasts for a few short minutes, and we go almost until the end of the movie before anything happens because we just fall back into the same rut of people being exposition machines to move the plot forward.

Speaking of the plot, it was stupid. Why did it have to be demons? Why did there have to be a forced romantic angle between Lundgren and the main female lead whose name I can't remember because it was that bad of a performance. Why did there have to be this whole subplot with her being some kind of human-angel hybrid that when absolutely nowhere?  Why did I agree to watch this movie?

This was like a more fun version of a movie that struggled with the same issues The Void struggled with. It was a cool core concept that got ruined by terrible writing and missed opportunities.

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