Dark Haul

Back in the day, heck if I remember when but it was like thousands of years ago, A woman is about to give birth. The problem is that her husband is the 13th child and she's about to pop out her 13th child. The prophecy, as we are told in this SyFy original movie 'Dark Haul' is that something bad happens when this event occurs. The truth of the matter is that this woman actually pops out a 13th AND 14th child. One being a raging crazed winged demon baby and the other being a cute little baby girl with a tail. The demon baby kind of 'aliened' out of mom so she's gone now, but both baby brother and sister survived and they have a story to tell.

Fast forward to the present day where these twins are like 1200 years old or something, and being watched of by the Guardians of the Guard or something. Big brother, that being the demon, is mythically known as the infamous Jersey Devil and every once in a while it busts out its cage and completely wrecks stuff. Little sister Zib (Evalena Marie), minus her tail because they cut it off, seems to be the only one that can control her demon brother though she's becoming less and less willing and able to do so, because quite honestly being in bondage for the last 12 centuries is starting to suck for the girl.

Watching over these two abominations of nature, who probably should've been choked out when they were babies back 864 A.D, are two groups of armed commando protectors. One is led by the benevolent Damon (Rick Ravenello) who sees good in Zib AND her murderous demon brother and wishes no harm to come to them. Then we have the ass kicking, no name taking merc Knicks, as played by the legendary Tom Sizemore. We love Tom Sizemore here at the FCU, and this movie… while fairly awful on many levels… doesn't chip away at that love even one tiny bit, because just having Tom Sizemore in your movie, even when he sleepwalks or is in a drug induced stupor, which I don't believe he was in this movie, just makes your movie that much better.

Regardless of that, Knicks wants to see this demon and her sister just end, and while this character is presented as the 'asshole' of this movie, we can kind of see his point. Plus this creature, in addition to being fast, violent, having the ability to fly, and looking like Satan, also has the powers of mind control and illusion casting. It's an awesome power. On one hand it can trick you into thinking one of your colleagues is him, which of course will have you start shooting at it. Then on the other hand, he can trick your brain into thinking you're having sexual relations with one of your colleagues, which is a little better than getting shot at I think.

But where does the Dark Haul angle come in? Our heroes load this thing and its sister into a big rig to take it somewhere to do something. I'm not sure what, but I think the benevolent guy talks about setting them free… which is crazy… while the asshole just wants them dead. Which is so much more logical. On this journey our beast does get free, it causes all kinds of human destruction and messed up image casting, including making a dude pop an ice cold beer which was actually a hand grenade pin, which was pretty cool, as brother and sister team up to finally free each other from the ties that bind. Though not all is what it seems. Like when is it ever?

'Dark Haul', as I mentioned earlier, is fairly awful. It is drab, oft times feels lifeless and listless, it wasn't exactly the most coherent movie around, a lot of the performances seemed to be handled by actors who looked like amateurs, and the ending was kind of strange. I think I got it, but it wasn't exactly crystal clear.

But what this movie does have, written by some dude named Ben Crane and directed by another dude named Daniel Wise, is BIG ideas. Man, I like a movie that has zero dollars, yet still shoots for the moon. I mean these guys made up a whole, brand new mythology from scratch. The 13th child of the 13th child raining hell on the earth. A blood thirsty demon with the ability to fake out your brain, with a sister that has the ability to touch the ground and make stuff happen when she does this. I never quite figured out what this thing was she was doing, however. Plus the movie had mad dismemberments, and shootouts, and car crashes, and explosions, and brain fake-outs… The kids that made this mess of a movie 'went for it', and gosh darn… I appreciate that.

But unfortunately, despite the calming influence of Tom Sizemore and the earnestness of Rick Ravenello, and all of those other exemplary things that this movie put forth in a truly solid effort to try and entertain, and not to mention the rest of the cast of hardworking actors, 'Dark Haul' was still drab, and listless. It could be it just needed a tighter edit, or perhaps all of the big ideas that I mentioned that were in this movie might've needed to be toned down just a little bit to make the movie a tad more manageable, but 'Dark Haul' does possess the feeling that it came out of the oven a little too soon.

But we still admire this movie. Why make just any old movie when you can go for it, especially if Tom Sizemore is willing to hang out with you for a week a two. I like the effort of 'Dark Haul', I just wished the execution was a little better.