Horus: the Awakening – review

Directors: Chris Davison & Trevor Ford

Release date: 2022

Contains spoilers

I’m unsure of the date of this one as it has no IMDb page at the date of writing the review, though I suspect it to be 2022, but it prequels Queen: the Awakening. Like that film this is flawed.

The film starts in 1936 at the residence of Dr Earl Williams (Chris Hardman) who is due to travel to Texas in order to meet a patient with a rare disorder. He has an experimental treatment based on vampire blood.

werewolf woman

However, in that part of Texas something is attacking cattle and a local rancher blames a woman found in the area. We have seen her with fangs but she is not a vampire, rather she is a werewolf – a member of the clan Dagari. Horus (Derrick De-Mond) appears in the area also and eventually, after a lot of dialogue, he ends up being the factor that “breaks the seal” and causes a war between the vampires and werewolves.

Derrick De-Mond as Horus

If the description is thin, its because, honestly, the plot was thin. There seemed quite a bit going on but with characters and scenarios that were difficult to buy in to, so the resultant film was just meh and I have to admit it was a chore to sit through. That isn’t to say that there wasn’t an attempt to build a quality film, I could see at the heart of this a desire to make a competent drama – it just didn’t grab me. Indeed, had it been truly awful I might have been more invested than I was.

transformed

It is probably not helped by having the war between the vampires and werewolves mostly transformation free. We do get one werewolf transformation that is obscured by lighting (to hide the rubber-looking mask, I’d guess). The storyline does step forward in time (as well as backwards) and the narrative interfaces with the set later but produced earlier Queen: the Awakening.

I really am sad that this didn’t hold my attention or imagination, I made notes but even looking back on them the narrative felt no more than meh. A short review for this one. I just couldn’t get into it. 2.5 out of 10.

At the time of writing there is no IMDb page.