ARENA WARS (2024)
a review by Evan Landon
It's all fun and games when someone gets hurt.
That is the tagline, which I do like. It just has nothing to do with the movie at all.
Low budget movies like this are difficult to criticize because they can be easy to spot problems with it's production, but let me point out the things I did like: the gore (of course), the character designs because you could play like any of them in a video game (except that knife guy), and seeing that Michael Madsen improv talk show during the credits. That knife guy was horrible though.
Q. How come in every movie that someone has to fight a guy with knives, the knife fighter guy always sucks? It's like, “dude... get a gun or something. You suck at this.”
This movie starts off full throttle, but then it dies down to a snail's pace. That is kind of where this whole thing falls apart for me; in popcorn movies, you absolutely have to keep the pedal to the metal and keep the action going. Instead, the pacing suffers and depending on anyone that is not a marquis name to hold the reigns in something like this is tenuous. It was great seeing Robert LaSardo, Eric Roberts, and Michael Madsen again, but they are not in it for very long, so I assume they only had a few hours, grabbed their paycheck, and took it right to the bank. LaSardo kind of went out like a punk, but those fight scenes definitely need some choreography. There were times you could tell nobody worked on anything before the camera was on.
It starts off with gore that disguises a weaker story which wouldn't be a problem if you had a likable or relatable main character because complex plots weigh down movies like this. I love the premise though. Reminds me of a lot of Roger Corman in the 70's, but I could not tell you why. As far as the story goes, there is way too much of it. We do not need to know everyone's back story, especially when sacrificing action and gore for screen time.
What Brandon Slagle and the Mahal Brothers have here is a great idea, but not a great story or screenplay. The practical effects would be forgivable, except that time was sacrificed for getting to know characters that nobody really cares about. Like I said, these kind of movies do not need character development; what they need is more gore and more action. Some of those costumed hunters could have been action figures, yknow, if they were on screen long enough. They were the bestest parts.
With such impressive titles as Bikers Vs Werewolves, Art Of The Dead, Bus Party To Hell, and Attack Of The Unknown already under their belt, Mahal Empire Productions has a very bright future ahead of them and we who love our schlock. In fact, they should get ahold of SyFy Channel with some of those. That would be a great idea. I would hook them up if I knew anybody there.
I am very interested to see what titles they put out next because some of those sound batshit crazy fantastic and you know I am down for that.
2 Out Of 5