The Devil's Rock

 The Devil's Rock is a vanishingly rare thing: a serious horror movie from New Zealand.

 Two New Zealander commandos are sent to the channel island on the eve of D-Day to sabotage a German gun emplacement as a distraction. Their mission goes smoothly - too smoothly, you might say if you only spoke in clichés - but as they're leaving they hear a woman's cry coming from within the bunker.

 Because I guess neither of them has ever seen a horror movie, they go in to investigate, and find that something's done a bloody number on the occupying nazi troops; Bodies everywhere, in various states of dismemberment, strewn all over the surprisingly extensive underground tunnels.

 Unfortunately, one of the Nazis - one col. Meyer (Matthew Sunderland) - has survived. He ambushes our intrepid kiwi soldiers, kills one of them, and takes the other one, Captain Grogan (Craig Hall) prisoner.

 But... he seems in no hurry to kill or torture our man for information. As it transpires, this is another tale built around Hitler's mythical ahnenerbe misadventures, and Meyer is trying to deal with the fallout of a demon summoning gone wrong, and needs Grogan for... well, it's never totally clear, except that he keeps repeating that they're in the same boat.

 The infernal creature soon comes into play: a succubus in all but name who takes the form of Grogan's beloved late wife (Gina Varela). While there's an element of mystery - what exactly is happening here, and what does this or that other character really want - the film is, unexpectedly, more of a chamber piece, with the fraught conversations between the three taking up most of the run time.

 The script, by director Paul Campion, Paul Finch and Brett Ihaka does a decent job of keeping tensions high and budgetary needs low. It's all a bit bone-headed (the movie literally examines that age old question: what is worse, the nazis or an actual demon from hell?), and there's the sense that it's treading water at a couple of points, but the two opponents are mercurial and menacing enough to keep it decently entertaining.
 The acting also holds up. No one is going to win any awards, but the cast is up for these silly, pulpy antics and seems to be having fun. Sunderland in particular is very compellingly flakey - something that also extends to his accent, which I thought was a pro, not a con.

 Director Paul Campion is an FX guy, a matte painter (there's a nice shot of the nazi building where I imagine he got to do his thing), but most of the film it's good, old fashioned makeup effects that shine here. Just about all scenes take place in either tunnels or a couple of cramped rooms, lending the film a good claustrophobic atmosphere.

 It's all right, I liked it on its own terms. Sadly, what made it really memorable for me was something that's got nothing to do with any of the efforts from Campion, the cast or his crew... it was the incredibly shitty, and obviously machine-generated Amazon subtitles.

 Picture the scene. An SS officer is preparing to torture you. He looks you up and down, grabs your face, and softly says:

 In-fucking-credible. Nothing else was as funny, but it injected all sorts of random nonsense and non-sequiturs into the conversation. "Gott In Himmel" gets subtitled as "go to him", and then there's this glorious line:

"What kind of lewd tricks, special ects, and evens do they pull you out?"

 I'm sorry, The Devil's Rock, but I'm afraid that this is what I'll forever remember you for. Amazon, man. They ruin everything.