‘Crypsis’ Review
Stars: Eddie Nason, Anthony Hoang, Michael Armata, Paul Anthony Rogers, Taylor West, Adam Wolf Mayerson, Jordan Mitchell-Love, David Rackl | Written and Directed by Paul Anthony Rogers
Oh my god, where to start with Crypsis? The official plot line goes something like this: “A group of friends make a bet to see who can survive camping on an island for a night. Unbeknownst to them, a strange creature lurks throughout the night terrorizing their every move, and sound is their biggest enemy.” But in reality what we get is a bunch of unlikeable, obnoxious bro-types going to an island, being as bitchy and annoying as any female genre stereotype could be (which is the ONLY refreshing thing about this film!) and getting picked off one by one by an extra from Lord of the Rings.
Can you tell I didn’t like Crypsis? Because I really didn’t. Between the cliched story and the terrible characters this film is a slog to get through. The kind of film that, for most audiences, is ripe for multi-tasking through… that’s if you want to sit all the way through it that is! I can honestly see people switching this one off way before the [also terrible] “twist” in the story.
I say twist but it’s just another typical plot point used in a myriad of other genre films before. There is honestly not a single original idea in the entire film. Well, beyond the fact that the filmmakers essentially replaced every female character with a male character and made them just as cliched and stereotypical as the token “get chased and get killed” female stereotype ever could be! Other than the under twist there’s little to recommend Crypsis at all. Hey, even the monster is ultimately disappointing.
OK, so I did like the fact that we got to see the FX work that went into the creation of the creature given that we saw a LOT of it but, and this is a huge but, as the film points out in the beginning, Crypsis essentially means the way animals hide from others, camouflage etc., falls into this category. Now in terms of the monster this CLEARLY doesn’t apply because we see this Lord of the Rings Orc reject a lot. SO are we then to think that crypsis in this case relates to the cast of characters? That one or more of them is hiding, going unnoticed, among the rest of them? Maybe, just maybe, you should’ve made more of a point of that earlier on then, instead of hitting us with a “twist” towards the end. And yes, I put twist in speech marks to emphasise sarcasm because it’s honestly not much of a twist at all.
In the end Crypsis is an all-round disappointment. Great FX are wasted on a creature that disappoints. The unlikeable characters disappoint, the kills disappoint (the only real highlight being death by finger poke). Hell, even the idea of using female horror stereotypes for the male cast in this film ultimately disappoints. For shame.
Crypsis is out now from Evolutionary Films in the UK and Uncork’d Entertainment in the US.
