The Devil's Tomb Review

“Together, we will dine on the afterbirth of her new becoming!”

Need I say more?

I probably ought to. The Devil’s Tomb stars Cuba Gooding Jr as the leader of a band of mercenaries who have been tasked with finding a scientist who is trapped in a secret underground laboratory in a desert in the Middle East. As the team explore the facility, they encounter various priests and scientists all of whom are looking somewhat worse for wear and have developed a strange predilection for quoting scripture and spewing nasty-looking corrosive black vomit on our fearless heroes. As they progress, the true nature of their mission is revealed and various members of the group are killed and/or possessed by the mysterious evil presence lurking in the lab.

The Devil’s Tomb is a seriously poor film. The concept – stupid as it is – wouldn’t be so much of an issue if there were any humour or a sense of irony about the proceedings. Additionally, all of the characters are jerks, idiots or bores; as such you won’t be rooting for any of them. More annoyingly, there are three actors in the film I would consider genuinely exciting screen presences – Ray Winstone, Ron Perlman and Henry Rollins – and none of them do anything with their roles anywhere near interesting enough to even count as the ‘good bit’ in an otherwise bad film. They simply add to the naffness. Winstone recently stated in an interview on BBC 5 Live regarding his upcoming remake of The Sweeney that, “if the script weren’t good enough, I wouldn’t be doing it.” Clearly he has not applied the same level of scrutiny to The Devil’s Tomb, or he turned a blind eye for the pay check, or he was lying out of his East End arse.

There’s a whole catalogue of problems with The Devil’s Tomb – highlights of which include some truly cringe-worthy flashbacks courtesy of Gooding Jr and a painfully misjudged buboes-licking, pus-guzzling, lesbian love/mutilation scene, the inclusion of which is for the benefit of god only knows who; certainly not the poor actresses involved. There is also pretty much nothing at all to recommend it. Boring, unintelligible, addled crap. And don’t be thinking it’s one for the ‘so bad it’s good’ section of your DVD collection – it’s not even worthy of that questionable accolade.