H.P. Lovecraft's The Tomb stinks, too. It stinks so bad I had to hit myself with a stick every few minutes to keep watching it. The pain of the stick somehow made The Tomb more bearable. Regardless of the fact that The Tomb dispenses with internal logic, dispenses with the scares, dispenses with the gore, and aggressively tries to make itself annoying, it stinks. And, as such, it has a 'storyline.' Two wounded souls find themselves trapped in a grimy location by a vindictive phantom voice that taunts them, challenging them to figure out who their captor is, and why they are where they are.

Yeah, the plot is from Saw, but I guess Lommel figured that Lovecraft would protest less than if he called the film James Wan's The Tomb.

Victoria Ullman and Christian Behm literally stagger their way through the mess, one is never sure if their exhaustion stems from having broken limbs (fake bones protruding through skin and all) and being forced to hang out with a bunch of cheap rubber props straight from Spencer's discount bin, or if they're just tired of putting up with Lommel's crap. Nonetheless, they still manage to sink their performances, making their plight as clueless whiners who can barely stand up so terribly annoying that you will be chanting for them to die already after about eight minutes.

Part of this has to do with Lommel's insistance on obnoxious camera work, always framing his characters in the least flattering way, but part has to do with the actors themselves generating less enthusiasm than your average water-cooler co-worker generates listening to the boss's boring stories.

The final nail in this coffin (OK, there are plenty more nails if you want them: MTV-style video-trickery with no purpose being just one of many) is the fact that any semblance of plausibility, thematic coherence or comprehensible conclusion is utterly absent. The fulcrum of this travesty relies on people having absolutely no memory of doing things that make no sense in the first place.

The DVD

Video:
16 x 9 Widescreen presentation of this Digitally Mastered mess only assures that you'll be forced to see more of this crud than should be allowed. That said; it looks OK. Clearly shot on video, it is crisp and clear, not HD by any means, but who wants to see pointless HD double exposures and such? Colors are rich and blacks are deep, but not deep enough to hide every aspect of the movie, which would be preferable.

Sound: English 5.1 Dolby Digital Audio will please those with the right set-up. My 'fake 3-D sound' setting revealed several instances of intriguing sound placement that heightened the meager atmosphere.

Extras: The notion of extras for a movie like this is equivalent to salting the wound, if you see what I'm saying. Luckily, the losers stiffed us! English Closed Captioning and that old duo, English and Spanish subtitles march hand in hand with such marvels as Interactive Menus, Scene Selections and a Trailer Gallery.

Final Thoughts:
It takes all of my strength to avoid giving out all the spoilers I can in order to a) keep anyone from renting this and b) be able to heap more derision on The Tomb. I mean, I know all involved are people who probably deserve some compassion and respect, (or at best are just trying to make a living) but foisting such half-hearted junk on us in hopes of making back the few hundred thousand it looks like they spent on this is just wrong, wrong, wrong. If derivative, cheap, tame, aggravating and insulting are words that describe your ideal movie experience, by all means waste your money on this movie. Or, just throw three bucks into the gutter, then puke on it. The end result is the same.

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