Thorns review

By David Dent

Jonesing for the type of low budget film distributed by the late, lamented (by some) Empire International Pictures? Well step this way folks, as indie filmmaker Doug Schultze, ably assisted by wife Julie, delivers a film that equal to the lowest of output from that studio.

Don Bennett plays Gabe Greenwood, a former priest who lost his faith, now a NASA employed auditor, who is sent to a distant outpost, the Iron Mountain Observatory, to inspect goings on there, in particular the radio silence maintained by the building’s incumbent, Dr Malik (Bo Shumaker); we’ve already witnessed a gory prologue involving the good Dr M slicing up his own eyeball, so things are clearly not good. A video call from Archbishop Jenkins (Doug Bradley), previously Gabe’s employer (well his secular one), talks about a “celestial mystery” and relays some footage, delivered via deep space probe, of a potty looking nun outside the Observatory banging on about end of days stuff.

When he arrives Greenwood finds scenes of chaos, plus the nun, Sister Agnes (Cassandra Schomer), who has now been rendered voiceless for some reason, and eventually the rather Cenobite thing that Dr Malik has become, called for some reason ‘The Necronaut’, with a face looking like a portobello mushroom left in the fridge for too long.

Together they must prevent Malik from completing his mission to deliver ‘hell on earth’ to the planet via a satanic transmission beamed through from the probe.If all this sounds like fun, well my friend you’re welcome to it. The cynical references to hell, peppered throughout the script along with a load of Biblical non sequiturs, and the presence of Bradley as a rather disembodied architect of chaos (basically it looks like his scenes were filmed separately and inserted), are clearly designed to sell this to the ‘Hellraiser’ franchise crowd; the ones who enjoy the latter, rather crummy straight to video sequels.

The paucity of budget here – small cast, limited sets, lots and lots of stock footage – makes Thorns a struggle to watch, and there’s little narrative or stylistic invention to overcome the general meanness of production.

Thorns screened as part of Frightfest 2023.