After successful runs
with proto-cult films Big Ass Spider!, Turbo
Kid, Jeruzalem, and Tales of
Halloween, production company Epic Pictures have made a great name for
themselves and are heading to the Sy-Fy channel this month. Their latest
offering is the end-of-days themed Day of
Reckoning which follows one family’s twenty-four-hour fight for survival in
a world overrun with demons.
Joel Novoa’s Day of
Reckoning deserves credit for sheer audacity of concept and pulls off some
great large-scale monster-filled disaster imagery. There’s also some great
parallel Earth, stuff since the film takes place fifteen years after an initial
reckoning, and it’s nice to visit a post-apocalyptic world where things have
been somewhat recovered and the human race crawls furtively on. If anything though,
the horror/sci-fi dystopia stuff isn’t in there as much as it should be, so the
world feels oddly inconsistent. There’s a fine cast at work though and everyone
does well to bring the world to life.
Much of this is as cool as you’d expect it to be, but after
the first few glimpses of mania, proceedings start to dull. A lot of the issues
come down to the quality of the effects which are, for want of a better word,
flimsy. If the film had been more like Big
Ass Spider! (which appears for a cameo) and embraced its dodgy effects and
B-Movie aspirations, there could have been some great fun. Especially with
prolific genre stars like Raymond J. Barry and Barbara Crampton on board. Instead,
there’s a lot of doom, gloom, and scenes which aren’t really constructed to
scare or thrill.
Thankfully, Day of
Reckoning knows it can’t pull off the epic rumble you might want, so it
scales down and delivers a tighter, more controlled final set-piece. The film
feels most comfortable when it keeps the hell-beasts in the shadows and turns
the pace up, but it doesn’t happen enough. It’s a real shame because, somewhere
in here, there’s an undeniably cool premise populated with interesting
questions. The notion of afterlife, or any theistic influence, is put to bed
too quickly, and since there’s little food for thought anywhere else, it feels
skimpy on meat.
If the effects had been practical and the gore more heavily
indulged in, there could have been a rip-roaring time to be had here; instead
it’s a dour-faced disposable which rambles through its runtime without evoking much
reaction.
DAY OF RECKONING / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: JOEL NOVOA /
SCREENPLAY: GREGORY GIERAS / STARRING: JACKSON HURST, HEATHER MCCOMB, JAY JAY
WARREN, RAYMOND J. BARRY / BARBARA CRAMPTON / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
Expected Rating:
7/10
Actual Rating:
