Review of The Veil

By Dave B.

Wow. Just…wow. The Veil (2017, currently on Netflix) is DEFINITELY going on my Worst of 2018 list. The story had promise: A warrior from an aggressive empire is left for dead by his comrades. He’s miraculously brought back to health and is found by a pacifist tribe who he teaches to defend themselves against his former masters. As he teaches the tribe to defend itself, it’s members grow more aggressive and decide to take the fight to their enemy, leading to a showdown between the rogue warrior and the emperor he’s sworn to serve.

​I can get behind a story that has that basic premise. And I have no problem with movies with miniscule budgets. What I do have a problem with, is movies that have no forward momentum. The Veil is 85 minutes long. The middle 40 minutes of the movie consists of one continuous training montage. Can you imagine? Watching it is surreal. The writer had an idea of how to begin the movie and how he wanted it to end and instead of building a plot or making compelling dialogue, he decided to show guys training for half the movie. And not interesting training either. I’m talking about some of the most poorly choreographed training and fight scenes in film history. The fighting  in the lowest budget action movie from the 1970s is literally 1001 times better than what you will find in The Veil. 

Truthfully, I could have even accepted that. I mean, there’s room in the world for odd movies with crappy action, and different people have different tastes. But The Veil committed the gravest movie sin of all: it was epically BORING. The only movie that I’ve seen this year that is undisputedly more boring is Bokeh, which is legitimately the worst movie I’ve ever seen. I’ll admit that The Veil didn’t have me so bored and angry that I wanted to punch my television, just so that something would happen. But that’s mainly because it was too short of a movie to fully engage my rage.

​In short, the fact that I sat through the entirety of The Vale, serves as irrefutable proof of how much I love everyone who takes the time to read my reviews. Because I would have preferred doing nearly anything to watching this boring, ridiculous, senseless, meandering garbage. I don’t recommend it. Don’t watch this movie. I’m begging you. Seriously. You’ll hate yourself it you do. 

Rating: 1.5/10