Nekrotronic

From the first days of humankind, infernal beings have lived among us. Trying to possess us, causing suffering and mayhem and... you know, demons will be demons. They had us against the ropes, a handy animated introduction lore-dump tells us, until some people rose against them and got magical powers and vanished most of them back to hell.

 But some remain among us, both devils and hunters, waging a war unseen that can determine the... whatever and you get it by now. Basically, the plot of every other horror/fantasy nerd-baiting manga/RPG/videogame mediocrity.

 I wish I could say Nekrotronic - Kiah and Tristan Roache-Turner's follow up to Wyrmwood - rises above those uninspired origins. And actually I will say it, because that's a pretty low bar to clear. Maybe I'll mumble a little while I say it, though, because it's not great either: It spends too much time setting up a universe that isn't that interesting, throws in a quite a few jokes that don't work, and its low-budget action varies wildly in quality and effectiveness.

 It starts promisingly enough: After the prologue we're introduced to our protagonist Howard (Ben O'Toole), a sewage worker and his buddy Rangi (Epine Bob Savea) - ostensibly a co-worker, but he just stays in the truck playing on his phone all the time. They have a likeable enough chemistry. It's Rangi's game that starts driving the plot, because it (a kind of Pokemon Go with ghosts) is actually part of an evil corporation's plan to use phones to possess people en masse. Oh, and yeah, apparently demons from hell found a way to get into the internet. Which you'd think might be used as commentary, but nope.

 Soon enough those demons enter the picture, leading our protagonists to realize there's a secret world filled with hostile occult forces - something about reality being a sugar-coated topping, etc. etc. While running away, they get rescued by Luther (David Wenham), a guy who kind of looks like Sean Bean and drives around in a high-tech van with his two beautiful daughters (Caroline Ford and Tess Haubrich).

(Spoilers from here on out - you have been warned!)

 Luther does indeed get Sean Beaned, but not before explaining to our intrepid protagonist that the demon hunter powers are hereditary, and he's the son of the demon hunterest demon hunters that ever demon hunted. Oh, and his mom (Monica Bellucci!!) got possessed and is the big bad.
 Howard's buddy is shortly killed but brought back as a ghost who follows everyone around, kind of like a lame, unfunny Griffin Dunne; his main thing is popping up leaning casually at weird angles, something the filmmakers apparently thought was hilarious. I guess Joe Piscopo in Dead Heat is a better comparison.

 Will young Howard master his gifts? Will the prettiest demon hunter daughter inexplicably fall for him in the few hours they have together? Well, yeah, duh. But what is pretty unexpected is that along the way Howard fucks up, repeatedly, to a degree that these movies seldom have the balls to pursue. Sure, it makes it that much harder to buy him as a hero (or to understand why two certified, experienced badasses would come to like him or even put up with him) but it offers up some really funny moments in a movie that mostly flubs it jokes.

 It's an action/horror/comedy hybrid with just a few laughs and no scares, so the action has to pick up the slack. And it does, kind of, in a very low-key, low-budget way. Despite a few exposition dumps, the script keeps things more or less lively. Visually, I liked the designs. There's not a lot of elaborate stuff, not with the budget the filmmakers were working with, but some of them are pretty out there:

Pretty metal, right? Or at least very Doom.

 The whole film's deal is a mix between demons and technology, and it does ok on that front. The effects are a mix of practical and digital with, well, mixed but mostly likeable results. There's some shootouts, some cool ghosts, a lot of energy attacks and wavy power lines coming out of hands. It won't blow anyone away, but there's an energy to it I kind of enjoyed, at least when the filmmakers weren't shaking the camera for (shitty) effect.

 So definitely not a great movie, and maybe not one I'd recommend, but... I don't know, it's kind of fun. It's silly, overstuffed, buys into its own mythos with way too much enthusiasm, and honestly it's just kind of a mess overall, but I found it enjoyable. It's similar to Wyrmwood, but where that film's oddball ideas mostly worked, the ones here mostly don't.