OMG Horror

Sophomore jinx for one Brendan Foley it seems, who after his debut Riddle, turns to a bottom of the barrel creature feature that equally fails to both entertain and frighten. Personally, I love it when a film is appositely titled for its own deficiencies. As a film, Legend of the Bog is certainly eons a way from being any sort of legend. That’s not to say it isn’t legendarily bogged by thoroughly amateurish filmmaking on every level. Bogged down by its derivation, its utter lack of creativity, bogged down by insolent subject matter and inability to capitalize on any of the talent associated within the production. In sum, Legend of the Bog is undeniable b-movie twaddle that should be quarantined for fear of mass contagion.  


 

We open in a primitive Irish countryside. A poacher baits and traps a foaming Neanderthal, what we later learn to be a bog-body, by luring the thing into a gasoline puddle before lighting it ablaze. The local triumphs! Cut to the now, some preppy Archaeology instructor named David Wallace (Jason Barry) lecturing a class on the lore of the aforementioned swamp dwellers. “Bog Bodies” are said to be mummified human corpses who propagate in the depths of Irish peat-bogs. They’ve been around for 2,000 years it seems, well, at least one in particular. Wallace and his fast-rising acolyte Saiorse Reilly (Nora-Jane Noone) whisk away to the isolated Irish woodland in search for the last remaining bog-body known to exist. Will they find it?  

So they turn to some alpha-meat-neck called Mr. Hunter (Vinnie Jones), a priapic putz replete with orange hiking-camo. He scowls, grunts, growls, gives the impression he means business, but even locked and loaded with a rifle, this is about the most pathetically feeble role I’ve seen Vinnie Jones play. Hunter’s a master of the bog, very familiar with the geography of the region and whatnot. “Everyone’s here for a reason”, Wallace quips, “why are you here?” “Cause I’m a hunter” replies the decked out rifleman. And that’s about as engaging as the dialogue ranges. Highest level of mediocre acting here goes to Noone, who at least tries to remain low key in a series of over the top histrionics (don’t worry, she’ll get back to working with Neil Marshall again soon enough). No matter though, Olivier couldn’t trick people into believing this dialogue or convince them in anyway to buy such a fruitlessly asinine story.

Lionsgate is a company I champion ardently, in particular their, at times, unabashed, support they show toward genre films. Horror ones even more so. But they marketed this film all wrong. Laughably wrong. On the DVD cover, we get a frame of Vinnie Jones in medium close-up, donning commando gear with an Uzi on his arm. Standing in front of a steamy bog no less, with zombie like totems in the background. Well, be warned that Jones only appears in the last 30-40 minutes of the picture, and the only mummification comes via atrocious CGI that morphs a mud-man into a fat bald dude looking like Butterbean. He spits and mutters nonsensically, fomenting about as much fear as a Mr. Clean commercial. Really though! It’s like the attack of your beer-gutted neighbor Todd, only with worse breath and more makeup. It’s like the attack of Steve Wilkos (the bodyguard on the Jerry Springer shows all those years) only with bigger rings under his eyes.  

As far as positives for me go, I admire the sheer notion Ireland is churning out marketable horror flicks. And to shoot the film entirely on location in Ireland is a plaudit worth mentioning. The countryside and flowing rivers, despite dredging little fright, is truly a welcome and fresh sight to see in a movie. But the superlatives end their. They really do. The film is boring, not very funny, lacking entertainment in a way that is actually pretty un-watchable. Even the minutia, the things that often go unnoticed the larger film watching public, like the score, was painfully uninspired and seemingly plucked from stock-action-audio from the school of the generic. The kind of film you need to smoke a bag to in order to endure the entire length. I mean, yeah, with a 1.6 million dollar budget, how quality can the technical side of production be? I get it. But why even spend a dime to tell such an insipid piece of tripe they call Legend of the Bog? Guess we’ll never know!  


   

 

Terror Rating: 1 out of 5
Originality: 1.5 out of 5
Level of Gore: 1.5 out of 5
Overall Rating: 1.75 out of 5

Recommendations: Humanoids from the Deep, Toxic Avenger