Guardians is set in a world where a secret organisation protects Earth & it's habitants from evil forces, they travel around in a cheap van defeating Vampires & monsters & generally making the world a better & safer place to live. Team leader Alex (Shannon Watson) is alerted to the presence of monsters in a small US town that have been summoned by ex-team member & all round bad guy Dr. Strand (Bryce Lord) using an ancient spell book which is one of the most powerful occult items in existence. Strand intends to create an entire army of monsters & take over the world unless Alex & his team who work out of a white van can stop him. They find most of the townspeople barricaded in the local high school which means they also have a rescue mission on their hands...
Scored, edited, written & directed by Drew Maxwell I will get straight to the point & say that Guardians is quite simply terrible on all fronts. As I write this comment the only other IMDb user comment rated Guardians an impressive 10 out of 10 & describes it as the 'greatest film of all time' at least twice, suspiciously this user has no other comments & is surely a fake review since I simply can't believe anyone would rate this piece of rubbish a perfect 10 out of 10. Everyone is entitled to their opinion but to my eyes everything about Guardians is awful, the story takes ideas & themes from the likes of The Mist (2007) with the whole mist covered town setting with various survivors fighting off monsters, the whole ancient evil book of spells & magic smells of The Evil Dead (1982) while the whole team of heavily armed military type character's fighting monsters bears more than a passing resemblance to Aliens (1986) & the thing about a secret organisation protecting an ignorant Earth from various monsters & Vampires might remind you of films like Men in Black (1997) & Blade (1998). The film is very poor on all fronts, Guardians is the sort of low budget rubbish that is written around it's budget & the lack of money pretty much determines what will happen rather than the writers imagination. The character's & dialogue are awful, there's zero humour, the action scenes are very poor with an awkward mix of unconvincing CGI & on set effects, the whole film is very predictable & lacks any pace, the story doesn't draw you in or entertain & I honestly can't think of a single positive thing to say about this. Guardians isn't a so bad it's good film it's a so bad you'll want to slit your wrists film.
Right, as expected the CGI computer effects are less than convincing. The creature design is alright but the animation & movement is poor. There's no gore to speak of, a guy is impaled, someone is stabbed but otherwise it's just some fake blood splashed around. The basic concept of the film didn't work for me at all, all the surviving townspeople shelter inside the local high school with nothing more than glass panel doors as protection & the makers ask us to believe that these super human monsters that can rip the roof of a car can't break a door down or smash a window & get into the school. Even with simple wooden barricades blocking the doors I still don't buy it for a second, I mean these monsters are pretty useless if they can't break a door down, I mean how are they expecting to take over the world if they can't even get past a single door? Maybe I'm thinking about it too much, I don't know & I don't really care since Guardians is so bad but it's riddled with problems & holes & just plain stupidity it doesn't work as a serious film which it undoubtedly sets out to be.
Production wise the film is rock bottom, I know it had a low budget but that's still no excuse for turning in such an awful film. There's no scares or tension or atmosphere or any semblance of coherent story & none of those things require huge amounts of money, do they? The cinematography is awful & there are an alarming amount of times when you literally can't see whats happening because the lighting is so bad & the screen is pitch black. The acting matches the rest of the production standard wise.
Guardians is an utterly awful film, I don't really care how low budget it was or how hard the makers tried but when the end product is so bad you can only forgive so much & Guardians ask's you to forgive it's entire existence which I can't. Sorry.
Scored, edited, written & directed by Drew Maxwell I will get straight to the point & say that Guardians is quite simply terrible on all fronts. As I write this comment the only other IMDb user comment rated Guardians an impressive 10 out of 10 & describes it as the 'greatest film of all time' at least twice, suspiciously this user has no other comments & is surely a fake review since I simply can't believe anyone would rate this piece of rubbish a perfect 10 out of 10. Everyone is entitled to their opinion but to my eyes everything about Guardians is awful, the story takes ideas & themes from the likes of The Mist (2007) with the whole mist covered town setting with various survivors fighting off monsters, the whole ancient evil book of spells & magic smells of The Evil Dead (1982) while the whole team of heavily armed military type character's fighting monsters bears more than a passing resemblance to Aliens (1986) & the thing about a secret organisation protecting an ignorant Earth from various monsters & Vampires might remind you of films like Men in Black (1997) & Blade (1998). The film is very poor on all fronts, Guardians is the sort of low budget rubbish that is written around it's budget & the lack of money pretty much determines what will happen rather than the writers imagination. The character's & dialogue are awful, there's zero humour, the action scenes are very poor with an awkward mix of unconvincing CGI & on set effects, the whole film is very predictable & lacks any pace, the story doesn't draw you in or entertain & I honestly can't think of a single positive thing to say about this. Guardians isn't a so bad it's good film it's a so bad you'll want to slit your wrists film.
Right, as expected the CGI computer effects are less than convincing. The creature design is alright but the animation & movement is poor. There's no gore to speak of, a guy is impaled, someone is stabbed but otherwise it's just some fake blood splashed around. The basic concept of the film didn't work for me at all, all the surviving townspeople shelter inside the local high school with nothing more than glass panel doors as protection & the makers ask us to believe that these super human monsters that can rip the roof of a car can't break a door down or smash a window & get into the school. Even with simple wooden barricades blocking the doors I still don't buy it for a second, I mean these monsters are pretty useless if they can't break a door down, I mean how are they expecting to take over the world if they can't even get past a single door? Maybe I'm thinking about it too much, I don't know & I don't really care since Guardians is so bad but it's riddled with problems & holes & just plain stupidity it doesn't work as a serious film which it undoubtedly sets out to be.
Production wise the film is rock bottom, I know it had a low budget but that's still no excuse for turning in such an awful film. There's no scares or tension or atmosphere or any semblance of coherent story & none of those things require huge amounts of money, do they? The cinematography is awful & there are an alarming amount of times when you literally can't see whats happening because the lighting is so bad & the screen is pitch black. The acting matches the rest of the production standard wise.
Guardians is an utterly awful film, I don't really care how low budget it was or how hard the makers tried but when the end product is so bad you can only forgive so much & Guardians ask's you to forgive it's entire existence which I can't. Sorry.