CROWN OF SHADOWS Wields A Dull Blade

CROWN OF SHADOWS (DVD)

2024 / 142 min

High Fliers Films

Review by Stinky the Destroyer😾

On the DVD cover, there’s a review quote from a website touting Crown of Shadows as “Game of Thrones meets 300.” While that might sound enticing to some, it’s been my experience that no movie promoted as “(insert title) meets (insert title)” has ever been any good.

Sure enough, this creatively bankrupt exercise in tedium makes your typical mockbuster from The Asylum look like…well, Game of Thrones or 300. Worse yet, it runs a deadly 142 minutes. Even worse than that, there’s so much obvious use of AI that I can’t help but question the amount of actual human effort involved in throwing it all together.

The generic plot has Prince Elderon (Andrew Gourlay) on a quest to defeat his evil sister, Queen Ginnarra (Megan Tremethick), who cruelly rules the kingdom of Aberon with otherworldly help from “the Dark Gods.” But he’s not alone. Elderon discovers he has the ability to summon dragons, just like his murdered father, which makes him the right guy to lead a resistance against Ginnarra. 

Even if you aren’t necessarily a stickler for originality, it is atrociously written, the story, dialogue and characters coming across like teenage fan fiction. And not only is the movie long, it moves at a snail’s pace, with interminable scenes of characters taking excruciatingly long pauses between delivering their lines (exacerbated by pedestrian performances). 

Somebody's doin' a little crop-dusting.

Most of the conflict is presented through exposition rather than on-screen action, which might actually be a good thing, since the fight scenes are clumsy and the CGI is only a step or two above video game graphics. It is accompanied by a music score loaded with obnoxious, repetitive chants that sound like the kind of heavy metal lyrics Ronnie James Dio would’ve discarded for being too trite.

But the real rub here is the abundance of AI used to make everything look more epic. Not only are the differences between these sequences and location shots aesthetically jarring, it’s overuse makes one ponder how much they relied on AI for other things. It sure would explain the derivative story, silly screenplay and monotonous music.

But even if you’re one of those who are totally cool with AI replacing genuine creativity, Crown of Shadows is a laborious endurance test. Too long and slow to even qualify as so-bad-it’s-good, just staying awake for the entire film might be one hell of an accomplishment.