Title: Mongolian Death Worm
Directed by: Steven R. Monroe
Starring: Sean Patrick Flannery, Victoria Pratt
Daniel, a treasure hunter (Flannery), is in search of Genghis Khan’s tomb, which as legend tells it is guarded by monstrous “Death Worms.” An American oil company somehow upsets the worms that halt their drilling by killing off their workers. Daniel gives Alicia, a doctor-without-borders physician (Pratt) a ride to get medicine to a nearby shanty-town where they both encounter the troublesome oil company bigwigs and their hired toughs, as well as the worms.
The title alone sounds cool. The cover art looks intense, almost like a “Tremors Meets Dune.” I don’t know about you, but I loved Tremors; as most likely did the people who green lit “Mongolian Death Worm.” However this is not Tremors. This isn’t even shot in Mongolia…in fact it looks a hell of a lot like Texas, and I’ve never been to Texas or Mongolia. Did the location scouts think nobody would notice? One surefire way to alienate an audience is to blatantly cheat them on the details. They didn’t even try to cover the English labels on the trucks with Cyrillic text. C’mon SyFy, we nitpicker geeks are your bread & butter. Show some respect!
The worm design was actually pretty good, although it looks like a Predator/Alien lovechild larvae. Unfortunately the worms screen time were tad limited and seemingly recycled depending on what scene required their presence. Many scenes were almost shot for shot Tremors, which brings me to question: Why not call it “Tremors Presents: Mongolian Death Worm” when the only difference is that it’s supposed to be Mongolia?
Sean Patrick Flannery and Victoria Pratt did the best they could with the script and storyline; and that’s about the entire positive I have to say about the acting. The gun toting oil company villain was laughably bad with his campy, almost improvisational dialogue. I will admit I did enjoy the Chinese girl getting pureed in a well, which was an expected death, albeit more juicy.
With a running time of 90 minutes…It’s a SyFy movie. You know what you’re getting yourself into.
Special Effects : 3 out of 5
Story: 1 out of 5
Acting: 2 out of 5
Overall Rating: 2 out of 5
Reviewed by JM Willis
