Dungeons & Dragons: The Book of Vile Darkness

A young man tries to join The Knights of the New Sun. However it has been too peaceful for too long, and the knights have been corrupted. The Knights are massacred and only the young man survives. He and a band of morally questionable warriors must stop the reawakening of a great evil. The characters are actually quite compelling. Most of them live by the idea of survival of the fittest. They have no time for the weak. It makes for an interesting group of heroes. And the actors play their parts very well. The scale of production and the effects are on the small scale but that's not unexpected. The movie is going well, but the ending is too convoluted. The action and the storypoints become too confusing and random. It was at least 5/10 if not for the ending.

The evolution of the Dungeons&Dragons films is strange. It started with a Hollywood crapfest, filled with special effects, comic relief and known actors, but having no story, continued with something that felt more like a D&D plot, but was acted abysmally and finished with this, which has a good storyline, interesting characters and is truly entertaining. Somehow, the third movie is the best. But hold your horses, not all is rosy. The first thing that you notice is that the plot is complex: characters are evolving constantly, there is no clear delimitation of good and evil and there are several chapters of the story that are each strong on their own. This is probably due to the script being adapted after a book, even if a D&D one. The second thing you notice is how badly is Jack Derges acting. I understand that he is a newbie actor, but he sucks. Probably brought on because of his looks, he can't act to save his life. However the other actors more than make up for it: Eleanor Gecks is beautiful and has that witchy charm that was required while Barry Aird is indeed making the film interesting. He totally acted and looked like a young William Sadler in this. Of course, there are some painfully bad scenes as well, however not that many. The spells were original and entertaining, the fights were few, but decent, and again, there was a story and characters that I could feel and root for. The budget was low, but if Grayson and his dad would have been played by better actors, I think this would have been a good movie, one that people would have been glad to see and recommend. It certainly doesn't deserve the low rating on IMDb.

I was pleasantly surprised by this movie. I watched it expecting cheesy fantasy action with a dumb plot, bad acting, and blatant appeals to fans of the game like Wrath of the Dragon God did. It delivered on some of those things, but it far surpassed my expectations. The most wonderful thing about this movie was how many risks it took. It was not a traditional fantasy movie at all. The protagonist is a good knight type but he teams up with a very evil party. The writers didn't assume its audience was dumb and that they'd need a clear good guy and a clear bad guy. I appreciated that so much. The character dynamics are excellent and you're constantly wondering where everyone stands. The good ones have flaws and the evil ones have relateable and redeeming qualities. They're complex, it's really wonderful. Hollywood doesn't do that much any more. The ending is also very non-traditional. Some may find it disappointing, and to some degree it is, but I thought it was effective. It's elegant in its simplicity. I found myself wondering what would happen next the entire film. At the end I wished it were longer. The dialogue was well-written and well-delivered, which is more than I can say for a lot of Hollywood blockbusters. Special effects were sub-par but that's easily forgiven, I thought they were pretty excellent for the budget. There was some cheese and some of the film will definitely be lost on people unfamiliar with Dungeons and Dragons. I imagine that's why it has such a low rating. I gave it 10 to boost it up, but IMO it deserves a solid 7/10 or more.

I Really Enjoy this movie last night, Lots of fun. But the Ending was so bad which let me down. I Don't like the HERO actually he look so dumb. Haven't watch "Dungeons & Dragons: The Book of Vile Darkness" first two movies. If i get chance I will watch them. The Ending should be when she insist him to come with her, What the heck stop the HERO ? You Know what the problem is nowadays of Hollywood movies.? I have seen lots of good movies BUT terrible endings? WHY ??? WHY ??? My Message to Hollywood. Please do satisfy ending. Instead of putting stupid twists

If you haven't watched this movie, Don't do it. I did it, trusting on a positive review here, and it was a complete waste of time. Spoilers are marked on this review. The characters were bland. The professional assassins were just sociopaths. The ONLY black person in the movie was "coincidently" the only character whose skin was all painted over. The only female character who isn't a *, decides that one day after meeting the hero that "her body belongs to him" for his pleasure, and from then on she's just madly in love with him for no reason. This of course, was after she was the one who needed saving from a dragon, and the knight had to go save her. Not clichéd at all, of course. *SPOILERS* The plot was so weak. If one of the Knights of the New Sun code was to not have sex, how come Grayson even exists? His father clearly broke that vow. And why would it be needed a Knight of Light's blood to make the ink for the Book of Vile Darkness? It wasn't said at any point that it had to come from a "good guy", and it'd be way more logical to come from a bad one. Was it for the irony? It just didn't make sense. And then the move just ends with him them saying goodbye. It was badly done, it just seemed like they ran out of things to say so they called it a stop. I was expecting a conclusion made like the introduction was, telling us how Grayson destroyed or hid the book parts again, but apparently the future of the book is irrelevant for the movie called The Book of Vile Darkness.

I have read a number of reviews of this movie that seem to judge the film simply by its limited budget. Personally, I have watched this move over and over several times and I rate it the best of the three. Two was pretty good and one just showed how much a plentiful budget does not make a good film. The acting is universally sound and in some cases very good indeed. In particular Barry Aird's necromancer and Lex Daniel's assassin are very entertaining. The two highlights are Aird's character quoting Mark Twain (he doesn't reference him directly of course) and Daniel's character explaining his touching religious devotion. That speech has resonated with me since I first saw the film, and you to may also find yourself reflecting of how many of the under-people you would like to liberate from the celestial grind wheel. If you're a fan of this genre (fantasy) you will very much enjoy this film which benefits greatly from being set in an evil-aligned adventuring party. Strongly recommended 'over a beer' viewing.

This movie has a great story, a surprisingly dark tone, and a solid cast. The special effects are also really well done, particularly considering what must have been a low budget. My boyfriend and I are gamers and old school D&D dorks so we were expecting to be underwhelmed. Instead, we both found this movie to be really entertaining. People and dragons get blowed up "real good", there are some cool witchy spells, an unpredictable villain (Bezz), and the male lead is easy on the eyes. It definitely reminded me of a D&D adventure where a group of evil PCs run amok. Don't let the low budget production value or crowd pleasing cheese scare you off. This is good, cheerful fun.

If you are NOT an RPG player and a DnD fan you should seriously not watch this movie,On the other hand if you ARE a DnD fan then it's worth your while. Keep in mind it's a low budget movie but its much better than the 2 previous ones.You can actually see people LOOT the corpses after battles and the spells used are truly recognizable if you have played DnD 3.5 As i said don't expect anything special but for a fan of this genre that's into Dungeons and Dragons universe it will be an enjoyable movie. Acting is more than OK on a couple of Characters but pretty bad on the main guy. For the people unfamiliar with Dungeons and Dragons the rating should be like 2/10 so don't waste your time.

It is a surprise to find a decent, alluring story within this series of films, though I didn't find the 2nd film as bad as others say. I did see a bad trailer for this latest edition, so I wasn't expecting much at all. The production team here found a winning combination mixing more macabre, darker sensibilities with the fantasy, finally,(!) for this seems a better understanding of how it would be. Acknowledging that this entry is of a modest budget, I did find it to be more compelling than the other entries. My only real criteria, is that the ending appeared to be rather hasty, and also, I found the casting the knights father flawed in that he didn't appear old enough. It is a shame that market constraints for this kind of film are so limited, I would love to see this at a longer running time, and explore these themes as novels are able to do, but given the constraints this production does create an intriguing moral predicament for this knight, and maintains an interesting atmosphere that adds much resonance to the story. Also the acting and the CGI effects are decent, the dragon in particular was surprisingly well done. Here's to a new direction in this series, I hope the creators can explore more fully.

I had very poor expectations going in, but was pleasantly surprised by a story that focus on characters that aren't your normal "do good" heroes. The acting is okay and the effects are on par with the effects you can see on new television shows. The script is better than many of the big budget movies of today, but it's not Lord of the rings. The story is somewhat predictable, but enjoyably. A few nods to the game can be found throughout the movie, but you could easily get the same enjoyment out of the plot without having ever played the game. If you like fantasy give it try.