User reviews

This film is badly marked down in my opinion. There are other films "outpost" being one title which stand out in this genre of Nazis and the occult and this has the ability to match them all with solid acting performances. This is also really for a more mature audience unlike "Dead Snow" which in my opinion has a slight comical factor about it. When you consider the small cast and the time spent on screen by the actors the plot is held together solidly. For its genre please give this film a viewing and you will be pleasantly surprised of its quality. I have not heard of any of the actors but they all gel together convincingly.The suspense building up is unbelievable.

Thanks for reading and go and enjoy the film.

Like the other reviewers, I'm a bit surprised at this movie's low rating. It's not the most amazing horror movie I've ever seen, but it's good enough for a 6/10 or 7/10.

The directing is a bit uneven, but there are some quite striking visuals. The writing, while a bit clichéd, is still competent. For a movie I was expecting to be barely watchable, it was a very pleasant surprise.

I suppose the obvious comparison would be with The Keep, where a group of Nazis unearth an ancient evil, then seek to banish it, when they realize they're over their heads. This certainly isn't a pretentious movie, and it seems to have no illusions about being high art, but it is a bit heavy on the exposition and dialogue. If you have a short attention span, you might want to skip this movie, because the violence and gore aren't really as prominent as it leads you to believe ("Saw with swastikas" is not a very good description of this movie).

For a B movie, it's really quite enjoyable. Just don't go in expecting a big budget and slavish attention to detail.

THE DEVIL'S ROCK is a little-known but more than effective Kiwi horror flick set during the dark days of WW2. It's one of those films that links the Nazis with the occult, exploring their penchant for black magic with a very dark storyline, although unlike most it doesn't go down the obvious route and just real with Nazi zombies. This time things are a lot odder, and dare I say it, more effective.

The film is oddly set on the Channel Islands, as a couple of soldiers infiltrate a Nazi bunker and discover that a massacre has just taken place. What soon unfolds is a plot involving devil worship, black magic, and the summoning of a powerful demon with a taste for human flesh. For a low budget movie, this is decent: for most of the running time we're trapped with three actors in a single location, and yet it never feels stale or boring.

I'm not saying that THE DEVIL'S ROCK is a masterpiece, because it isn't. The acting and script are only average. Matthew Sunderland gives the best performance as the conflicted Nazi colonel, and it's a shame when his character turns out to be far more ordinary than you expect from the set-up. Still, there's plenty of flowing gore on offer here, alongside effective demonic scenes that bring to mind the best of the Dennis Wheatley classic, THE DEVIL RIDES OUT. Horror fans should enjoy themselves.

This film stands on the strength of the actors as there is very little movement from the bunker which the Allied soldiers have come to put out of action.

I watched in rapt attention to the performances of the Nazi Colonel and the New Zealand Captain as they struggled to subdue the demon and keep a step ahead of each other.

I am indeed a horror fan and would love to see more character driven films such as this one. I believe it was put out by the New Zealand Film Commission, I should find out what else they have made.

The gore effects were top notch as well, I am puzzled by the people who feel it was too long and feel it was drawn out, maybe the sci-fi channel is more their speed, this is quality film making with superb actors (and actress) shot in an extremely atmospheric and convincing manner.

7 out of 10

There are better exercises that play with a similar idea as is this movie. Still this is not a bad movie at all. I got to watch this at a special preview at the Empire in Leicester Square. The director and some of the stars were there to watch the movie with a "kraut" (forgive the pun if you can).

Speaking of language problems, I talked to the director after the movie was over and asked him about the German language used in the movie (as can be seen on signs too). Overall a good job, that his researcher did, but there are a few minor mistakes that you might spot, if you know your German language. Overall a decent job on creating atmosphere too. A classic example of "B-movie", that will entertain people who like this stuff :o)

Set in the Channel Islands on the eve of D Day, two Kiwi commandos, sent to destroy German gun emplacements to distract Hitler's forces away from Normandy, discover a Nazi occult plot to unleash demonic forces to win the war.

Okay, I have to admit I had low expectations on this one. I had heard no buzz on it, the cover looked sort of cheesy, it has no names that I recognized. That was probably unfair, but I am just getting so used to the average horror film being crud. This is better than the average horror film.

The cinematography is beautiful, let us just get that out there. Such a great use of light and color. And the demon-Nazi connection? A good execution of that. We have seen some Nazi zombies, and we know that the Nazis had some interest in the occult... but I daresay I cannot recall the last time this was executed so well. This might not be quite as good as "Dead Snow", but it is in the same range and they would make a great double feature.

Where does this film sit in the history of New Zealand horror? While the budget is clearly higher than Peter Jackson's early endeavors and possibly even "Black Sheep", I feel like this one might take a while to catch on (if it does at all). Horror fans like a good-looking film as much as anyone, but they also like the humorous and cult horror films. While not devoid of humor, this is not like the tradition that Jackson started...

A commando infiltrates an isolated SS bunker on the eve of D-Day, only to find the threat from within is even more demonic than expected.

Well, I had high hopes for this. It opens very well - really atmospheric seascape, then a tense mine-field scene, a fateful choice by the hero to divert from the mission, a creepy labyrinth to smother all hope, and a promising two-handed drama that switches hunter and prey.

But it swoons into Hammer-style cheesiness. There were some really sharp points to be made here about war as the ultimate horror, and this story failed to make a connection, instead collapsing into goodies v baddies. Also it always amazes me how Anglo-Saxon horror is so coy about sexual images. So the story ends up really stunted, visually and dramatically. What a pity. I wonder if the funding system is effectively censoring films like this.

It is well shot, the actors are good - although delivery of lines was often a bit hard to make out - and the music and dialogue start with good restraint but fail to break out.

Overall, bright start but becomes dull.

When I first saw the low rating of this film, I had my doubts on watching it. Reading the plot summary, it seemed like a far-fetched concept that could only lead to cheesiness. I was wrong.

As was said by the other reviewer, the first thing I noticed was the solid acting performances of all the characters, be it main or supporting. The film had a good feel to it, and kept me at the edge of my seat all throughout. There were also moments of creepiness where you'd probably hold your breath, tensely waiting on what would happen next. The story was quite good and it held the film together until the very end.

All in all, this is a film I would recommend to fans of the genre. I'll definitely be adding this to my collection.

P.S.

I was honestly puzzled as to the low rating of this movie. Though I know it's not a great film, it definitely is a front runner and a notably good piece of work. Perhaps the people who gave it such a low rating wanted a gore fest or something with less...dialogue. I hope, dear reader, you won't be another sheep that just follows the opinion of the majority. Watch the film for yourself and be your own judge. It's the only way of discovering gems such as this.

The Devil's Rock: British Commandos, an SS Occult Unit in search of the ultimate Supernatural Weapon, Witchcraft, a shape shifting Demon. Yes, the Channel Isles were a fun place to be during WW2.

Two commandos land by dinghy on a decoy mission to sabotage gun emplacements thereby misleading the Germans as to the likely D-Day invasion sites. But they hear female screams coming from a bunker investigating they find a Lovecraftian scene, half eaten German soldiers, a soldier who has committed suicide. A Grimoire lies on the ground.

A surviving SS officer kills one commando and captures the other. Then we encounter the Demon who handily can take on the features of your loved ones. A summoning has gone wrong. The commando and SS officer are forced to cooperate.

Great Demon, ripping heads off.

Good War/Horror film, 7/10

Sorry but this was a waste of my and the missus's time. Would not advise anyone into seeing unless I am a right arse and want to make others waste their time.

Could have been done in 30 minutes... there wasn't really a story and only 3 main actors used, 3 which were in the movie and about 2 or 3 extras that died, so you can imagine how lovely it was to watch 3 people for about 1++ hour

I didn't think the acting was any great and what special effects... I expected a little more from reading the previous reviews, can only assume these people got done by wasting their time... and wrote a good review to waste ours... thank you so much for... nothing. Sorry if this is too harsh but what were the other people on when they watched it to give it good marks?

P.S. I was talking to someone and told them how I wasted my time watching a movie and I told him about the good reviews. You know what he told me? "I do that all the time, if I watch a really bad movie and I wasted my time I make other do the same and tell them it is an excellent film and they need to see it" :)) so there you go folks.

Entertaining, not too long, plausible (for the history and fantasy adepts among us), original story line, solid acting and hey, sure the quality of the effects would be at home in a B-movie but as indicated above the rest was well put together, i was entertained, she was sexy but dangerous and probably better than real all those loves (better?) left behind, oh memory can be such a harsh mistress.

As i mentioned, usually not a fan of the gore or horror, this was time well spent, enjoy.

THE DEVIL'S ROCK is a Kiwi creeper set during World War II. Two commandos (Craig Hill and Karlos Drinkwater) are on a mission to destroy German weaponry on a small island off the coast of France. All goes according to plan, until female screams are heard from within a concrete fortress. Upon entering the structure, the mystery and horror unfold.

Though much of the carnage happened before this story began, the visceral aftermath on display is certainly enough to get the point across! The resulting occult nightmare is well-realized and satisfying.

Everyone is superb in this movie, especially Gina Verala, who is adept at coming across as both seductive and terrifying, simultaneously! Matthew Sunderland is also good as Col. Klaus Meyer.

Highly recommended for genre fans who enjoy movies that go in directions they don't expect...

This movie had a promising concept but the actual movie turned out to be a total disappointment. And not just that, it was simply being a really bad movie as well!

There truly is an awful lot wrong with this movie. I'm sure that it got made with all of the right intentions and it's also quite a great accomplishment, considering its limited resources but it just simply isn't being a very good movie.

It already starts off quite poorly. The movie gets right into its 'action', which sounds like a good thing but in this case I would had liked to have received some more background information and characters buildup. Things now instead develop as the movie slowly goes along but problem with that all is that it never gave me a feeling that it was going anywhere, or was building up to some great, surprising or spectacular climax.

It's all so very flawed and ridicules. The movie does a very bad job at building up anything or handling its tension. It's picking a more slow sort of approach at times, no doubt in an attempt to create tension and mystery with it but it instead makes the movie needlessly long at parts and lets it drag as well.

Besides, the story is real hard to get into. Not just because of its lacking storytelling but also because of the story itself. The mission is supposedly a very important one, yet only 2, poorly equipped soldiers are send in and the research that the Germans were doing inside the bunker was supposed to be top secret and important for the outcome of the war. Yet the bunker is hardly protected and the two Kiwi 'commandos' have absolutely no problem entering it. Besides, if there was so many important research going on, than how come there was only 1 scientist and a handful of guards involved. Really, it was stuff like this that prevented me from ever liking the movie, or getting into it.

And there just isn't enough variety in this movie. It's one that is almost entirely set inside of a Nazi bunker, with only literally an handful of characters involved. The movie really doesn't do anything surprising or credible enough with its concept, even while it all still sounded quite promising and fun on paper.

There just isn't very much to enjoy in this movie, not even for the horror lovers, to which its main concept sounds like something truly awesome. Trust me, there just is nothing great or awesome about this movie at all.

3/10

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Two commandos from New Zealand arrive on the Channel Islands the day before D Day. The aim of the allies is to cause havoc there to distract the Nazis and draw their attention away from Normandy.

They are about to enter a bunker but a Nazi comes out warning them of what's inside. The commandos kill him and enter the bunker. One of them is quickly dispatched. The other is grabbed and bound by the last remaining Nazi in the bunker. A woman constantly screams in the background as the Nazi aims to interrogate the commando who doesn't reveal much. The Nazi managed to grab a photograph from the commando showing a woman, but he won't reveal who she is until the Nazi threatens to burn the photo. That's when the commando starts talking.

The room where they are in is filled with corpses and body parts, there is a book with a pentagram too. When the commando manages to turn the tables he investigates upstairs what's with the screaming woman. But to his surprise, it's his woman, the one from the photograph. The Nazi warns him not to believe his eyes nor what the woman says, that she's some type of female demon who is responsible for the carnage in the bunker and who has an appetite for human flesh. He's the last one of a unit that was sent to look for esoteric artifacts which then the Nazis will try to use for their military advantage. He wants to defeat the demon but needs the commandos help. They engage in a ceremony but the commando wants to eliminate the Nazis as well.

The Devil's Rock sure is small budget. There are only a handful of actors and few locations, but it's a good-looking movie. We are made to spend too much time listening to the Nazi and the commando talk. Still, the movie works. Things improve once we meet the occasionally sexy demon-girl. It could have been even better had they picked a more attractive actress for that role, like the lovely Jessica Grace Smith who gets only a few seconds screen time. The historical and esoteric stuff is well researched and well done. So are the props. There's a bit of good gore and effects. It's a movie with the right ambition for the budget, they didn't try to do something they couldn't do.

Given that New Zealand is such a small film market, at least in comparison with the wealth of content cinemas have available to them from abroad, the number of homegrown films which see a wide release is unfortunately small. It shouldn't be a reflection on the quality of local film, just simply the reality of existing in a business so completely dominated by Hollywood. Which is why it's so disappointing when one of the precious few slots allocated to NZ films is filled by something like The Devil's Rock, a derivative, achingly slow horror masquerading as revisionist history. The concept is not essentially a bad one, yet it's handled in such a clumsy fashion that it makes one despair for the state of our national cinema if this is among the best that our filmmakers can do.

Playing out on an understandably small scale, The Devil's Rock runs with the oft speculated idea that during World War II, Nazis were researching and conducting experiments that dabbled in the occult, and in this case have summoned a demon to a small, uninhabited island in the English Channel. There's potentially interesting ideas here, but director Paul Campion's attempts to build the suspense necessary for a film of this type reduce the pacing to a crawl, and what should be creepy and unsettling ultimately ends up being painfully boring. The performances don't do the film any favours either, with particularly disappointing work from Matthew Sunderland (Out of the Blue), whose baffling attempt at an accent leads to much confusion about who is who, and what his motivation is. Before descending completely into the cheap Exorcist knock-off that it threatens to become, The Devil's Rock admittedly has an unexpected and welcome twist, although it's best not to consider the implications of what the film is suggesting in any kind of historical sense. The most successful New Zealand films tend to stick to well defined and culturally specific stories, but sadly, in trying to branch out into genre filmmaking, The Devil's Rock fails to deliver anything more than cheap, direct-to-video level mediocrity.

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Truth be told, then I had very little expectations to "The Devil's Rock", given the synopsis of this being a World War II movie with occult and demonic elements to it. But still, I had the chance to watch it, so I decided to give it a go and I sat down to watch it.

It didn't take long before it dawned upon me that this was going to be a slow-paced and not overly impressive movie. But I stuck with it to the end, in a vague hope that the movie would kick up in gear and become impressive. But that was not to happen...

The story takes place on the eve of D-Day, and we follow two commandos as they attempt to destroy a German gun emplacement. But things go horribly wrong and they discover that the German are conjuring up demonic things to aid them in the fight to take over the world.

Right, well I will say that the storyline did have potential. Although this potential wasn't really utilized in this movie by director Paul Campion. There was just something about the movie never catching on, because I always felt like there was something missing from the movie, and that the movie never really got up into a gear which would make it interesting.

The acting in "The Devil's Rock" was adequate enough, I mean for a movie such as this. You know what you are getting yourself into when you sit down to watch something like this, so the lack of award winning performances here should not come as a surprise.

As for the special effects, well, let's just say that there were some special effects present, albeit not great ones. And for a horror movie with supernatural elements, then having believable special effects and CGI is a must.

All in all, then "The Devil's Rock" was not a memorable or impressive movie in any way, and if you manage to watch it once, then chances are slim to none that you will ever sit down to watch it again.

I have to agreed with davidfurlotte (user review from 20 July 2011). This is definitely a B- horror movie if we talk about special effects (don't worry there is enough gore, blood and eye, brain…), but the story and good acting makes it more A-horror movie type. Even if there was not many special effects the story line make it more believable then other similar movies. I did enjoy the movie to full content and I do like good movie (A or B movie) with good suspension, blood, gore and specially solid acting and story line!!

I am kind of disappointed in IMDb rating or people who rate it so low 3.9 …. 3.9 only :-( this movie deserve more and it gives more it should be at least 6.5.

The Devil's Rock is a bloody little horror movie that I really enjoyed. The link between the occult and Nazis has been explored many time in horror movies, but I've never seen it done quite the way it's seen here

What is the NZ film commission doing investing public funds in this stupid film? What an outrage. Apparently these days aspiring film makers decide to make the most idiotic atrocity concept as their calling card to show (ahem) how talented that are. All they end with is a film that their family is politely embarrassed to see at some lame screening where everyone pretends that it is 'interesting'. Well like a Carry On Splatterguts movie, here is another one. YAWN and double yawn. Straight to the DVD bargain bin in some huge DVD sell-off store, which is where I found this stupid horrible movie for $3.99. Just because Norway makes zombie/evil/Nazi/horror films apparently some Kiwi 'auteurs' decide to be creative by copying them. What a shocking waste of film making resources and money. This feature has no chance of selling movie tickets in a cinema. and no chance of recouping its money... so why was it made? Whose lamebrain idea was it to invest? Nazi devil horror made in New Zealand... please! With so many good films available from genuine film makers how this awful ugly piece of smelly plastic allowed to fester into the marketplace?