DON'T KILL IT

2016 | DIR. MIKE MENDEZ | REVIEW BY SHAUN CRAWFORD.

While he's not as prolific as his portly contemporary Steven Seagal, Dolph Lundgren still drops his fair share of direct-to-video nonsense these days.

In director Mike Mendez' DONT KILL IT (Lundgren's 5th film of 2016) he plays Jebidiah Woodly, demon hunter extraordinaire, who descends upon  Chickory Creek, Mississippi when a particularly nasty, body-jumping demon befouls the small town.

Woodly, armed with all manner of hex's, spells and amulets, teams up with the local cops to bring the demon in.

Make no mistake, this is all but an episode of TVs SUPERNATURAL without the Winchester brothers, or their impeccable comic timing, and half the budget of a single episode of the show.

It's easy to see everyone involved has poured their hearts in to it, but the film suffers on a few fronts. While Lundgren, now 60-years-old, can still carry a film (with 80+ credits he's had plenty of practice) the material he has to work with from screen writers Dan Berk and Robert Olson is tepid, to say the least. It's too esoteric for its own good, self-conscious and borderline hackneyed.

Never quite sure if it's out to be a gore-filled fright-fest or a thigh-slapping comedy, DONT KILL IT straddles both genres without ever committing to either. The comedy is poorly-timed and the blood-letting is excessive, lacking impact (it even has a BRAINDEAD-esque massacre sequence in which half the town is butchered and it's neither thrilling, spectacular nor hilarious...it, weirdly, just is).

None of this speaks to the lack of characters populating Chickory Creek, a town seeming populated by caricatures and cardboard cutouts, a phenomenon as strange as the demon soul-jumper that terrorists it.

DTV doesn't have to be a sub-par realm (if you haven't seen Ted Demme's film NOOSE or the Cuba Gooding Jr vehicle WRONG TURN AT TAHOE for proof) but DON'T KILL IT is probably best reserved for the bottom shelf. It's fine if you're in it for the gore but there isn't much else on offer here.
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