Ogre (2008)

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Expected more

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

I hate to say it but John Schneider doesn't do a villain very well. The acting was personable enough that you cared when most of the characters, that you got to know, died. The plot is: John Schneider is essentially a wizard in a small town in the woods of Pennsylvania in 1859. A practitioner of the black arts but has the appearance of not really a bad guy despite this, he decides that the Mayor needs to go and magically inflicts him with a plague. Unfortunately, the plague spreads at an alarming rate and, once the Wizard's daughter is infected, he creates an even worse spell that takes away the plague but summons a monster (The Ogre) That requires a sacrifice every year or it will destroy the whole town. The spell keeps the townies from having kids or aging. Fast forward to present day when one of four young adults gets a map to a mysterious town. He grabs his pals to go camping and to find the lost town of Ellensford...and hilarity ensues (Well...not so much). What I love about this movie is that it relates a message that is conveyed through feeling it. It illustrates the point in the storytelling. True to good story telling, they don't say it...they illustrate it. There are few horror movies that can do this well and this makes the movie superior to the simple hack and slash genre. Another example of this (superior) would be 'The Fly' (1958). They could have made a better movie if they stepped in with both feet. This one required a little bit extra (and a few less voice acting Extras). My usual complaint with the technical. IE. People firing a muzzle loading musket and faking massive recoil...while one of the protagonists can fire a 12 Gauge shotgun one handed and there is none. No money in the budget for a phone call to the Bass Pro shop?The grand message is: 'Living in fear is no life at all'.The movie wasn't all that it could have been but it kept me engaged when I'm often very easily bored of TV. It's a refreshing change to have a movie stir up some emotions while getting a larger point across. Not bad.

GREAT STORY and no reviewer looked behind this story and saw the true meaning of this Allegory, except for its physical attributes. Like not be able to see the forest for all its trees. The story tell us, that fear can and must be over come with Courage against the odds. In the movie, Sir Bartlett represented today's establishment and all those, that support it. That lets young man and woman go off to be sacrificed on the altar (stock) of fabricated wars, as a sacrifice to Satan and his minions, under the pretense of security and a benefit to all. The tactic of fear (the Ogre) is used as a ruse to accomplish this, with the threat of a so-called war on terror. Sad, it seems that most viewers have over time bought into this deception.

Ogre was not a good, let alone great, movie, but considering the uninspiring title that I was expecting schlock, I was pleasantly surprised. It does have a lot of flaws, starting with the terrible effects, sadly the Ogre is no exception. There is still the lame gore and cheesy dialogue, while the story is thin, predictable and at times tedious. On the other hand, it is one of the more tolerable movies I've seen on the SyFy channel, because while not mind-blowing the acting does look as though they are putting effort into their roles, John Schneider in particular is interesting to watch. Katherine Isaballe does at times overdo it with the shrillness though. The characters are not characters you remember for years, but they are not as irritating as other characters from the likes of the SyFy disaster movies for instance, and they are not as blatantly stereotypical either. Although the effects do cheapen the film, Ogre didn't look too bad to me, the editing was at least not slip-shod and there was attempts at an atmosphere. Again, the music is nothing extraordinary, but it has some haunting themes and it doesn't feel as though it is slowing the film down. All in all, not bad, not good, just scraping the average line. 5/10 Bethany Cox

Actually, not bad for a Sci-Fi channel movie.Essentially, it's 1857, and a small town in Pennsylvania is beset by a plague, and makes a Faustian bargain with the town's magi to cure it. They all get to live forever, but they have to sacrifice one of their number every year to a bad CGI ogre and can never leave the town, lest they disintegrate. They never get cable.Oddly, no one ever finds this town for 150 years, until four college kids find it. Two wander into town while two others release the Ogre early. Well, the Ogre goes on a rampage, and hilarity ensues.But this is a little better than most of the 100 similar movies that Skiffy buys from the Direct to DVD discard bin. The performances are okay, and it's better than the usual "dead teenager" horror movie.The weakest element is the ogre itself. It looks like it was made by some Warcraft Nerd on his computer.