Odysseus & the Isle of Mists (2008)

What makes it different from others?

An absolute waste of money

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

As Greek this film is a disgrace and insult Homer and the Greeks! Why I bother watch it?

The movie kicks off with a lot of promise, and when I first came across it, I thought hooray another Homeric epic. The cast look good, at first, very Homeric, ironically only Homer looks out of place, more suited perhaps for a high school American pie movie, than a Greek epic. What is more annoying is how much he sucks up so much to the heroes, who don't do anything that heroic anyway. The movie totally lacks in pace and fails to live up to its initial promise. You sit through the movie waiting for the monsters to attack, but when they do they are a bunch of poor special effects. Clearly, the spending on special effects was really kept at a minimal. And the dialogue...don't even get me started. Who wrote that stupid script, at some point the dialogue gets so poor, you would think each character is reciting a nursery rhyme. And just who brought the idea of vampires in a Homeric story? For me, the movie just has nothing going on.

I stumbled upon this fantasy film by accident and didn't really expect much from it, even though it stars the Mummy legend, Arnold Vosloo, who made an excellent Darkman 2. I was pleasantly surprised.The premise, about Greek hero Odysseus encountering vampires on a lost island, sounds absurd. The special effects budget was clearly small and there are some scenes when you have to imagine what the heroes are fighting since the camera doesn't show it. However, the whole thing is saved by two factors. Firstly, the writers knew what they were doing. They were obviously familiar with Homer's classic epic, with the protagonist's strengths and weaknesses, and with how people talked and behaved in those mythological times. This helps makes the whole thing plausible. They also didn't waste time on unnecessary plot detours. Further, the story is actually well-crafted and every scene is actually relevant.Secondly, the cast perform very well. Vosloo, as ever, is charismatic, and delivers his dialogue excellently. Randal Edwards makes a believable Homer and JR Bourne is a courageous Perimedes. All this without any irritating side kicks or distracting contemporary styles of speech.If you're expecting a modern-day horror film, you'll be disappointed. But if you watch this with some cynicism, if you're familiar with Homer's Odyssey and enjoy a different slant on the vampire myth, this is a perfect Saturday afternoon movie, which may leave you with some interesting thoughts.

It's neither good nor bad, amateurish acting, poor direction with compentent special f/x,weak script/dialogue. Many movies lately just can't seem to get the language of a time period right without adding ridiculous modern dialogue clichés, slangs and what not. I kept waiting for one of them to pull out a cellphone because most the performances were phoned in, for me the beginning was the worse stupid twinkling lights in the background of scenes of them on the ship while long shots with harpies flying over head were of a cloudy twilight sky, so where did the twinkling stars come from....this is just pointing out one of many flaws and of course this ship was filmed in a studio with no water at all, I'm sure of it. If you're a fan of sword and sandal sci-fi adventure with sorcery and magic it only barely acts as an apetizer, a lightly flavored one at that, leaving you wanting terribly that you had The Odyssey starring Armande Assante in your DVD collection because watching all the hours of a rerun would be more satisfying than watching 90 minutes once you remove commercials of this drivel. I had tivo'd and fortunately was able to fastforward some simply painful dialogue moments in order to watch the special f/x. One thing to keep in mind few things shown as Sci-Fi Channel orginals they are really just productions from foreign markets like Canada, BBC, Germany or worse some reckless direct to video producer. Voslo does what he can but with this material its a wasted effort.