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Saturday, February 28, 2015

Dungeons & Dragons: The Book of Vile Darkness (2012)






Directed by: Gerry Lively
Runtime: 82 minutes

As of this post this is the last Dungeons and Dragons movie. It is also the best and worst of the three Dungeons and Dragons movies. It is the best as because it is the most faithful to the original source material and it is the worst because it assumes that the audience is made up of hard core D&D fans. This movie also assumes that the audience has read The Book of Vile Darkness.

Yes I should explain this one. The Book of Vile Darkness is one of two adult supplemental material books for D&D. Basically additional information for people who would rather pay for stuff they don't want to make up themselves. As for the subject matter of the book, take the works of Stephen King, Clive Barker, Poppy Z Brite, and Dan Simmons, run their collected works through a blender and have R.L. Stein filter and write the result. An afternoon spent watching horror movie or reading horror novels would be much better than what The Book Vile Darkness is.

Like the second movie there is back story over the opening credits. It is about Lord Dickhead, a man who hates all things living and gets off on being an evil dick to everything. Near the end of his life he clues into the fact that the fun will end when he dies. So he makes a deal with demons that his soul can't be destroyed and then has himself turned into a book. A book so evil that it spread evil, corruption, and madness to anyone who comes in contact with this vile book.

All this evil stupidity creates the Bros of Pelor (Pelor is the god of light and keg parties). These Bros are so awesome that Pelor gives them medallions to help them spread righteous light across the land. The forces of evil deiced to break the book into three parts. The ink was found and destroyed but the cover and pages disappeared.

The movie opens with our young hero becoming a Bro. And like all young heroes he thinks he is the chosen one who is going to change everything. But when he taps the scared stone, the stone does not light up proving that he is the chosen one. So our hero runs off while his fellow Bros have a good laugh at the hero's naivety.

The hero's dad consoles the hero after he is sure that he will not kill himself laughing at the site of his son. The two of them talk about how foolish the hero is being. Meanwhile, barbarians attack the Bros keg party because barbarians are dicks when they smell beer. So father and son join their fellow Bros and the scene cuts to next day. Because who really wants to watch a battle in a fantasy movie.

Our hero wakes up from being hit in the head and finds he is the only Bro left alive. He has a hazy idea that the barbarians kidnapped his dad. So trusting to plot convenience our hero sets out to save his dad. After some needless misadventures with a sex worker our hero finds the people who ordered the barbarians to attack the Bros in the first place. We have goth witch, creep with a mask, annoying assassin, hired goon, and Mr. I have two minutes to live.

This group won't let our hero join until he kills someone in cold blood. Luckily for him, Mr. I have two minutes to live remembers his name and walks right into our hero's sword. So team evil sets out to do the next thing on their list of tasks, kill a bad looking computer generated dragon. This leads to travel and getting more reasons to hate the characters. Then they fight and kill the dragon. This leads to the major thing that takes me out of the movie, everyone except our hero is needlessly evil and stupid. In the dragon's cave team evil finds the mcguffin they need and villagers from a town they need to visit. So what does team evil want to do with the villagers? Why kill them because they are weak for letting a dragon capture them.

However our hero is quick thinking and save the villagers by pointing out by keeping them alive the village will welcome team evil with open arms. So team evil goes into the village, welcomed like heroes, and hired goon goes to the village brothel to meet the topless female nudity requirement. Our hero and goth witch fulfill the required love interest part of the film and creep with a mask goes around the village being a needlessly evil dick because he can. Oh and the annoying assassin is robbing the village.

The next day team evil is about to leave but the villagers are not happy about being robbed. So the villagers locked the gates of the outside and have rounded up a posse to kill team evil. Our hero nearly talks team evil out of a needless fight but creep with a mask makes it worse. Forcing team evil to kill all the villagers without the villagers putting up much of a fight.

Later that night hired goon gets character development and poisoned by our hero. Then our hero puts hired goon and all the treasure team evil has collected into a magical bag (bag of holding) and throws the bag into a near by lake. He then puts annoying assassin in a situation where the assassin gets himself killed. This paves the way for team evil to get the last mcguffin and the last act of this movie.


If you are a D&D fan this movie is for you. It is the closest thing to a movie version of  role playing session that is not a comedy that you are likely to find. As for everyone else if you can't find anything else or you can't sleep this movie might be for you. But I don't suggest looking this one up unless this really your thing or your are a masochistic fantasy fan.

MVT: There is a undead child that benefits from the low quality computer animation as it adds to the creepiness.

Make or Break: What breaks this movie for me is team evil being evil and stupid so the hero looks more heroic.

Score: 4.15 out of 10





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