Film Review: Forbidden Empire (uk tile Forbidden kingdom) (also known as Viy)
Genre: Adventure, Fantasy, Mystery
Cert: 15 cert
Director: Oleg Stepchenko
Screen writer: Nikolai Gogol (story and characters) , Aleksandr Karpov (script)
Oleg Stepchenko (script)
Starring: Jason Flemyng , Andrey Smolyakov , Aleksey Chadov , Agnia Ditkovskite , Yuriy Tsurilo , Olga Zaytseva , Aleksandr Yakovlev , Igor Jijikine , Valeriy Zolotukhin , Nina Ruslanova , Viktor Bychkov , Ivan Mokhovikov , Anatoliy Gushchin , Aleksey Petrukhin , Aleksandr Karpov
Running time: 127 min
Parents advised to read before viewing film as some scene may contain scenes unsuitable for younger viewers.
Sex & Nudity: A few naked parts of girl's body
Violence & Gore: Some fights, cruel enough
Profanity: A man says that he doesn't believe in God, God is praised in a lot of scenes. A lot of talks about witches.
Alcohol/Drugs/Smoking: A man holds a pipe, lot of jokes about alcohol.
Frightening/Intense Scenes: The whole film is frightening enough: impressive 3D effect, appeals of demons, coffin flying with a dead body etc.
Story: Early 18th century. Cartographer Jonathan Green undertakes a scientific voyage from Europe to the East. Having passed through Transylvania and crossed the Carpathian Mountains, he finds himself in a small village lost in impassible woods. Nothing but chance and heavy fog could bring him to this cursed place. People who live here do not resemble any other people which the traveler saw before that. The villagers, having dug a deep moat to fend themselves from the rest of the world, share a naive belief that they could save themselves from evil, failing to understand that evil has made its nest in their souls and is waiting for an opportunity to gush out upon the world
Likes : This was a weird film to say the least, kind of frightening in a dark twisted fantasy way , that is based on "Viy" (Russian: Вий) is a horror short story by the Ukrainian-born Russian writer Nikolai Gogol, first published in the first volume of his collection of tales entitled Mirgorod (1835). The title refers to the name of a demonic entity central to the plot.
This reminds of a series i use to watch starring john hurt called the storyteller, where you would have the series of story with this type of dark fantasy mixed with the concept of hell boy, brother grim & few other things like pan labyrinth, in an old 80s style storytelling.
One thing that is not true though is comparison of this film with Tim Burton's 'Sleepy Hollow'. there is no real resemblance to that film other than in a superficial way, this film doesn't really share Tim Burton's mixture of violent horror and morbid humor although it has some dark moment's, although there's plenty of humor in this film & performance of some actors is almost entirely in comedic fashion, plus you can tell this was mean to be in foriegn form as the voices seem to be english dub which kind of make the actor seem dumb but in a comic way.
The C.G.I effect are brilliant done with a slight stop motion camera effects in places, but the film tends to over use the C.G.I bit to much, which dosent really ruin the film, as it's only a few scenes, but as for a dark twisted fantasy film it dose pretty well.
Dislikes : Its not the greatest of film's its dose have it flaws in dialog & the stereo stereotyping is pretty bad in this film, where it portrays woman as witches & this propaganda message of churches making slaves of he town people through fear, which let be honest they do anyway so there isn't really anything new there. From what ive heard is that this is a pretty poor remake, because the original film is more scarier then this, not that this didn't have it moments the some of the C.G.I effect were slight fake it just come off a bit unreal, but then this is a dark fantasy film so it get away with it.
Overall : Not a bad fantasy horror story, could of been done a little better, but overall depending on you taste of films it good story telling.
Rating: 4.1 out of 5 for entertainment / 6 out of 10 for concept.
Cert: 15 cert
Director: Oleg Stepchenko
Screen writer: Nikolai Gogol (story and characters) , Aleksandr Karpov (script)
Oleg Stepchenko (script)
Running time: 127 min
Parents advised to read before viewing film as some scene may contain scenes unsuitable for younger viewers.
Sex & Nudity: A few naked parts of girl's body
Violence & Gore: Some fights, cruel enough
Profanity: A man says that he doesn't believe in God, God is praised in a lot of scenes. A lot of talks about witches.
Alcohol/Drugs/Smoking: A man holds a pipe, lot of jokes about alcohol.
Frightening/Intense Scenes: The whole film is frightening enough: impressive 3D effect, appeals of demons, coffin flying with a dead body etc.
Story: Early 18th century. Cartographer Jonathan Green undertakes a scientific voyage from Europe to the East. Having passed through Transylvania and crossed the Carpathian Mountains, he finds himself in a small village lost in impassible woods. Nothing but chance and heavy fog could bring him to this cursed place. People who live here do not resemble any other people which the traveler saw before that. The villagers, having dug a deep moat to fend themselves from the rest of the world, share a naive belief that they could save themselves from evil, failing to understand that evil has made its nest in their souls and is waiting for an opportunity to gush out upon the world
Likes : This was a weird film to say the least, kind of frightening in a dark twisted fantasy way , that is based on "Viy" (Russian: Вий) is a horror short story by the Ukrainian-born Russian writer Nikolai Gogol, first published in the first volume of his collection of tales entitled Mirgorod (1835). The title refers to the name of a demonic entity central to the plot.
This reminds of a series i use to watch starring john hurt called the storyteller, where you would have the series of story with this type of dark fantasy mixed with the concept of hell boy, brother grim & few other things like pan labyrinth, in an old 80s style storytelling.
One thing that is not true though is comparison of this film with Tim Burton's 'Sleepy Hollow'. there is no real resemblance to that film other than in a superficial way, this film doesn't really share Tim Burton's mixture of violent horror and morbid humor although it has some dark moment's, although there's plenty of humor in this film & performance of some actors is almost entirely in comedic fashion, plus you can tell this was mean to be in foriegn form as the voices seem to be english dub which kind of make the actor seem dumb but in a comic way.
The C.G.I effect are brilliant done with a slight stop motion camera effects in places, but the film tends to over use the C.G.I bit to much, which dosent really ruin the film, as it's only a few scenes, but as for a dark twisted fantasy film it dose pretty well.
Dislikes : Its not the greatest of film's its dose have it flaws in dialog & the stereo stereotyping is pretty bad in this film, where it portrays woman as witches & this propaganda message of churches making slaves of he town people through fear, which let be honest they do anyway so there isn't really anything new there. From what ive heard is that this is a pretty poor remake, because the original film is more scarier then this, not that this didn't have it moments the some of the C.G.I effect were slight fake it just come off a bit unreal, but then this is a dark fantasy film so it get away with it.
Overall : Not a bad fantasy horror story, could of been done a little better, but overall depending on you taste of films it good story telling.
Rating: 4.1 out of 5 for entertainment / 6 out of 10 for concept.
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