Two American girls go on vacation to Israel and end up bumping into a wannabe archaeologist whom they accompany to Jerusalem but their holiday is cut short when they are caught in the middle of a biblical apocalypse. Sounds like a regular B-movie horror film? You would be correct.

It’s good to see a horror coming from beyond the mainstream with this film being made by the Israeli directors Yoav & Doran Paz and the use of the city of Jerusalem as a setting gives some beautiful imagery in the first half of the movie but unfortunately once the ‘action’ kicks off it’s a lot of back alleys and dark buildings which look like they could have been shot anywhere.

With the movie being shot from the Google glass perspective the movie has a first person view which, while original, leads to some extreme shaky cam when the main character is running and this leads to a lot of ‘off screen’ action however this novelty is probably the best feature of the movie and could have been a great premise if done correctly. (Check out the trailer for Hardcore Henry to see what I’m talking about)

The wannabe archaeologist, who turns out to be the expert on the scenario, has only studied the ‘Darknet’ and has sourced all his knowledge from classified websites and blogs, but he turns out to be the link between the girls and outbreak that they are caught up in. However, other than the fact that there is a gate to hell in the city of Jerusalem, as mentioned in the bible, and the fact that the movie is set around Yom Kippur, there seems to be no reason as to why this event occurs at that particular time and while the city is in a state of lock-down there’s never any real sense of mass panic as you would expect from a city being ravaged by demons with little chance of escape.

So the demons suddenly appear and they do look quite look so credit to the make up department where it’s due and there a few shots a shot of a giant, Cloverfield like, monster that is never explored further and Cloverfield is probably a good example of what this movie is trying to achieve but it never quite reaches the same heights so in essence it’s a cliched ‘wrong place, wrong time’ movie with a few jump scares and lots of idiotic decision making by the supposed protagonists.

There’s nothing here to keep your interest unless you’re a die hard horror fan. If you want a good foreign horror movie check out the superb Spanish movie Rec instead, otherwise just watch Cloverfield for a better rounded movie with slightly less shaky cam.

DJ Speaks Rating: 3.5 out of 10