forbidden empire movie reviews

FORBIDDEN EMPIRE – The Review

In the grand tradition of Russian fantasy films comes a new version of the supernatural legend of The Viy, written by Nicolai Gogol and previously filmed several times, most memorably by Mario Bava as one of the tales in Black Sabbath, (easily my favorite due to the participation of Boris Karloff.).

In FORBIDDEN EMPIRE , a young English cartographer Jonathan Green (Jason Flemyng) takes to the road after being chased out of the house by his lovers Father, played by Charles Dance, after being caught in bed with her.

Looking very much like a Terry Gilliam movie, with the frame over crowded with bizarre machinery, filthy looking characters in period costume (set in the 18th century) and lots of cgi monsters, FORBIDDEN EMPIRE is a beautiful film to behold and more than a little disjointed and episodic.

But like classic Russian fantasy films of the past such as Sword and the Dragon, and more recently Wolfhound, FORBIDDEN EMPIRE weaves a strange and unsettling spell. Our hero drives a horse drawn carriage that is meant to drive itself with the aid of his own inventions. His cartographer’s machine, also of his own invention, is a complicated and fascinating piece of machinery.

In his travels he encounters Cossacks who change into wolves, falls from his coach into a village that is overrun with demons and a local priest who is tasked with watching over the body of a young girl who drowned in a ritual meant to find her true love.

All manner of demons, large and small, assail the poor, superstitious villagers and the cartographer is not much help. Among the horrors is a Cossack who loses his head and keeps fighting while his disconnected head will not shut up. Over and over again we hear that “all women are witches” and the villagers behave accordingly.

FORBIDDEN EMPIRE has some good scares and is actually quite funny. If it has a drawback almost all the dialog is Russian dubbed into English, and very badly dubbed at that. Apparently dubbing is now a lost art.

The cinematography and the historical atmosphere are simply excellent. But with all the talk of witch craft and how to put witches to the test one can’t help but remember Monty Python and the Holy Grail “She turned me into a newt!”

FORBIDDEN EMPIRE is exotic and entertaining, a well crafted fantasy in the grand tradition.

FORBIDDEN EMPIRE lands on VOD May 22nd

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Forbidden Empire Review

Break out the vodka (pronounced wad-ka) and start boiling the potatoes, because Russian director  Oleg Stepchenko has a dark Russian fairytale he’d like to tell you. Loaded with witches, Slavic folklore, and mystical enchantments, Forbidden Empire provides a cultural spin on what would otherwise be a Brothers Grimm tale. Stepchenko keeps his influences in-country, using Nikolai Gogol’s story Viy  as a backstory for larger, more sinister(ish) adventures, but there’s an (ish) added because Forbidden Empire feels like two separate films the entire time. It’s like Stepchenko can’t decide which audience he’d rather please more, as the film erratically jumps from childish bouts of jubilant frolicking to sudden bursts of ghoulish debauchery. Ugh, what a haunting tease.

Jason Flemyng  stars in Stepchenko’s fable as an ambitious cartographer (Jonathan Green) who sets out to create detailed maps that show the true borders of countries. During his long and arduous journey, he stumbles upon a forgotten Ukranian land that’s filled with villagers who fearfully believe in witchcraft. High atop the foggy settlement’s highest peak sits a cursed church that holds the body of Pannochka ( Olga Zaytseva), and this is where the source of all evil is thought to be contained. But with the arrival of Green, Pannochka’s father finally sees an opportunity to honor his daughter with a proper burial. Green is a scientist, he doesn’t believe in the unknown, but after being surrounded by so much superstition, he just might have a change of heart.

There’s a fantasy epic hidden somewhere amidst Forbidden Empire ‘s morbid creatures and impish charm, but Stepchenko struggles to expand upon Green’s story despite showcasing an astute visual eye. There are wondrous bouts of enchanted lore that burst from the screen, be it Pannochka’s twisted ode to Raimi’s infamous Evil Dead tree scene, or Green’s mystical encounter with Viy himself, but coherency takes a backseat to these pleasing spectacles. Forbidden Empire is very reminiscent of most modern-day fairytale aesthetics, immediately calling  Into The Woods to mind, and there’s certainly no skimping on fantastical elements that transport us to imaginative lands built on crazed beliefs, undead spellcasters, and a multi-eyed beast who ensures certain death. But at what cost? Productions are only as strong as the tale they’re telling, and Forbidden Empire is one of the more muddled beauties in recent memory.

There’s a vague yin and yang effect at play throughout Forbidden Empire , as Stepchenko attempts to balance lighthearted goofiness with dark conjurings from the bowels of Hell. In no way is this film to be considered “horror,” not in the least, but two glaring moments tease a more vile watch than Green’s joke-laced mapmaking quest, and they spark a hunger for more terror.

When Stepchenko peddles scenes ripped from a child’s bedtime story, there’s a mundane notion of been-there-done-that filmmaking. The soundtrack dances about with woodwind whimsy and the townspeople over-accentuate terrible jokes, but then Stepchenko busts out these nightmarish creatures that act as a horrific energy boost. Headless goons, tiny winged bastards, legless torsos walking on cloven hooves – these are the moments where Stepchenko sells Forbidden Empire as a fantasy worth diving into. It’s just a shame that he spends more time on jokes about gigantic wigs and vodka-swigging doofuses.

The teetering balance between a dark that isn’t dark enough and a light that’s too bright translates into confused performances by most actors, and a horridly overdubbed soundtrack that accentuates every tonal trip-up. Jason Flemyng is the only actor you’ll recognize in the sea of Russian-bred performers, and he does a better job downplaying his character’s silly personality, but other townsfolk bumble about with an exuberance that’s more fitting of a child’s cartoon than a rip-roaring journey into the unknown. Flemyng’s character is full of intrigue, from Green’s elaborate carriage/traveling laboratory to the narrative letters he sends back home to a waiting wife, but he essentially finds himself surrounded by common jesters with each new encounter. Even the meanest thugs come off as harmless pests. If danger is what you seek, there are many other paths you should be following.

For such a lavish fantasy, Forbidden Empire blandly just exists. That’s the overarching problem. There’s an obvious ambition that drives Stepchenko, but he struggles to remain clearly focused on the film he wants to make. The tale of Viy sounds much scarier than Jonathan Green’s scientific detour – because apparently cartographers were the badasses of the 1700s. In any case, Forbidden Empire is a bit like a werewolf, where its beastly side only comes out briefly during a full moon. But when it does, damn do those fangs flash. Unfortunately, this scenario happens far too little, and we’re left watching an unsure film that fights a losing battle to be truly epic.

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Home » Horror News » Forbidden Empire (Movie Review)

Forbidden Empire (Movie Review)

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

PLOT: In the early 18th century, an English cartographer (Jason Flemyng) winds lost in the Ukraine, where he stumbles upon a village bordered by an impenetrable woods ruled by an ancient evil.

REVIEW: The story behind FORBIDDEN EMPIRE is actually a lot more interesting than the film itself. Originally titled VIY, or rather VIY 3D, this is actually a Russian mega-opus that’s been in production since 2007. Boasting a $26 million budget, this is a loose adaptation of the Nikolai Gogol short-story, ‘Viy’ which in, in 1967, was turned into the first Soviet era horror film. This mega-production seems more influenced by Hollywood blockbusters like VAN HELSING (appropriate if you consider this has been in production for almost a decade). According to Wikipedia, the production stated and stopped several times before – a few years ago – the decision was made to pretty much scrap everything and start over by shooting the film in native 3D.

Given the relatively large budget, you’d expect far better vfx, but the ones in FORBIDDEN EMPIRE wouldn’t pass muster in a release from The Asylum. They look like terrible cut-scenes from nineties era CD-ROM games. The one thing that FORBIDDEN EMPIRE really has going for it is some far-out Terry Gilliam-style production design and one admittedly fun scene where Flemyng’s cartographer hero has a horrifying meal with some villagers, who all start turning into hideous creatures. Even if the CGI is cartoony there’s enough imagination in this scene that it works.

The story isn’t especially good either, with Flemyng, for all his likability, sidelined for too much of the running time, with long flashbacks devoted to a faithful recreation of Gogol’s story, and very little character development for Flemyng’s roguish hero. The action scenes are all pretty tepid, with a really poor carriage chase early on featuring awful green-screen and cartoonish wolf-like creatures. It’s all very schlocky.

FORBIDDEN EMPIRE is the kind of film that may have had broad appeal in its home territory, but overseas it doesn’t really work for anyone. It’s too tame to be taken as a horror movie (the gore is all PG-13 level) and not exciting or enthralling enough to be taken as straight-up fantasy-adventure. This one’s an easy pass although you have to give director Oleg Stepchenko credit for finally finishing the movie despite all the production difficulties. While I had no use for the film itself, I bet the behind-the-scenes drama would make for an amazing documentary.

About the Author

Chris Bumbray began his career with JoBlo as the resident film critic (and James Bond expert) way back in 2007, and he has stuck around ever since, being named editor-in-chief in 2021. A voting member of the CCA and a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, you can also catch Chris discussing pop culture regularly on CTV News Channel.

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Forbidden Empire

Studio: eone directed by oleg stepchenko.

Jonathan Green (Jason Flemyng) is an enlightenment era scientist and explorer out for adventure, when he stumbles upon a Ukrainian village plagued by witches and demons. He details his adventures in a series of letters to his love back in England, Miss Dudley (Anna Churina), while her stern father (Charles Dance, Game of Thrones ) disapproves. Inspired by the tale of a demonic entity known as Viy by Russian novelist Nikolai Gogol, director Oleg Stepchenko has created a horror film more akin to the Universal monster movies like Dracula and Frankenstein, but with a whimsical period twist.

On paper, Forbidden Empire just seems so promising, especially to audiences longing for the dark fantasy of ‘80s films like Willow, Legend, or anything Terry Gilliam has actually managed to finish. Surely, Forbidden Empire hits some spectacular notes visually, but the overall structure just crumbles. Barely clocking in under two hours, it still felt overly long and tedious at times. The film suffers from jarring editing and a rushed pace, drowning out any sense of tension or drama with admittedly great imagery, but feels completely void of context.

Like a Gilliam film, it is an impressively ambitious production. Apparently stuck in years of development hell, it was completely scrapped at one point to be re-shot for 3D, at least according to a Wikipedia entry suspiciously written like a press release. Undoubtedly, some of the magic is lost in the 2D on-demand release, but the film’s flow is additionally disrupted by an unfortunate English dub that is more distracting than useful. The exception is all of Charles Dance’s scenes, which seemingly exist in another film altogether. In a narrative sense, Green’s story as a cartographer and explorer quickly take a backseat to the whole witch thing, making the story feel more like a bait and switch than an engaging adventure. Still, there are some thrilling sequences, and the monsters are great, especially for low-budget CGI. But despite all it has going for it, Forbidden Empire is too much of a mess to even stand out as a cult classic.

Author rating: 5.5 /10

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[Review] ‘Forbidden Empire’ Is Visually Impressive, But With a Disjointed, Frustrating Story

So, after being in a start-stop production for over seven years on a budget of $26 million, Forbidden Empire aka Viy is here. Based loosely on the Nikolai Gogol story of the same name, the film’s first weekend in it’s native Russia broke the all-time record at the box office, and a sequel has already begun filming in China. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Well, the Czech possession flick Ghoul scored a big opening in its native country as well, but that film was another “been there, done that” effort that failed to impress many people outside of the Czech Republic. I know, different country, different genre, and so on. Still, without the home field bias, does this epic do Gogol’s story justice?

Jonathan Green (Jason Flemyng) is an English cartographer in the 18th century, who has set out to discover the unreported areas of the world. In this case, Green is mapping the uncharted lands around Transylvania. After stumbling across a small village deep in the Ukrainian woods, Green discovers that the village is being plagued by monsters roaming around in the neighbouring swamp. While the village’s inhabitants aren’t all there themselves and are unsure of Green’s presence in their village, an underlying evil is lurking behind the scenes, and Green’s been caught in the middle.

The big attraction for Forbidden Empire is it’s environments. There are some really great fantasy visuals in this film, which reminded me of Van Helsing on more than one occasion. In fact, the film feels very much like Stephen Sommers’ adventure, for better and for worse (more on that later). Green’s over-the-top carriage is full of all sorts of knick-knacks, and really sells the idea that the character has been places. The style of the costumes, the lighting and the sets are all very well done, and really establish and maintain the fantastical 18th century setting. The other piece that helps out the setting are the gorgeous-looking creature makeups. Sure, the CGI isn’t the greatest (bordering on SyFy levels), but the practical effects are what really shine, particularly during the dinner scene where Green is host to a group of Cossacks (hint: They aren’t human).

When it comes to the film’s acting, it’s a little difficult to determine the quality, given Forbidden Empire was shot in Russian and later dubbed into English. Still, the mannerisms and body language are there. I assume that director Oleg Stepchenko knew this, as the film has a physical comedy component to it. Jason Flemyng is very likable as Jonathan Green, and appears to be enjoying himself in the role. Charles Dance sticks to the grumpy character role he often portrays in films as the Lord Dudley, father of Green’s lover, played by Anna Churina. While Dance’s character isn’t integral to the story, it’s still fun to see him here. Unfortunately, in spite of the physical acting, the dubbing in the film is not the greatest for the non-English-speaking actors, and as such, it takes away from much of the performances and gets annoying pretty quick.

I wish that crappy dubbing was Forbidden Empire ‘s only problem. Remember how I said that the film feels a lot like Van Helsing ? Well, just like that film, Forbidden Empire loves to have a lot of plot ideas. But unlike Van Helsing , not all of them when combined in Forbidden Empire make for an enjoyable experience. Case in point: The film starts out with Green and the aforementioned Miss Dudley in bed, and of course Lord Dudley despises Green, so Green must escape and go on his adventures. From there, the film’s plot and its happenings are revealed to the viewer via letters sent to Miss Dudley by Green via carrier pigeon. While that sounds interesting, the scenes of Miss Dudley and her father grind the film to a halt with their repetitive and unnecessary inclusion. Factor in the other plotlines, such as the power-mad priest of the village who sets the people against Green and the love story subplot between two villagers, the film just can’t maintain its momentum, especially when the plotlines aren’t fully fleshed out. Coupled with the film’s runtime clocking in at just under two hours, the opportunity to develop those plotlines into something more is frustratingly wasted.

Despite the cool idea of bringing one of Nikolai Gogol’s stories to life for modern audiences, Forbidden Empire fails to capitalize on the potential. Again, the film felt a lot like Van Helsing in spots, but whereas Van Helsing was loud and dumb fun with all of its plot threads, Forbidden Empire just ends up being disjointed and boring for much of its time. The dubbing is the continuous annoyance that helps to drive the disinterest I felt after a while while watching this film. Had the narrative gotten a much-needed cleaning and focus, the film would’ve been much better, especially with the great visuals and practical effects already within the film. See it out of curiosity if you’re sick of watching The Lord Of The Rings and are a fan of Van Helsing . Just don’t be surprised if you turn it off halfway through. And if you do want to see it, watch it in it’s original Russian with subtitles. There’s no sense adding insult to injury to a film that’s in need of fixing.

Writer/Artist/Gamer from the Great White North. I try not to be boring.

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Forbidden Empire

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Forbidden empire.

Directed by Oleg Stepchenko

The truth is in you

Early 18th century. Cartographer Jonathan Green undertakes a scientific voyage from Europe to the East. Having passed through Transylvania and crossed the Carpathian Mountains, he finds himself in a small village lost in impassible woods. Nothing but chance and heavy fog could bring him to this cursed place. People who live here do not resemble any other people which the traveler saw before that. The villagers, having dug a deep moat to fend themselves from the rest of the world, share a naive belief that they could save themselves from evil, failing to understand that evil has made its nest in their souls and is waiting for an opportunity to gush out upon the world.

Jason Flemyng Aleksey Chadov Agniya Ditkovskite Yuriy Tsurilo Olga Zaytseva Aleksandr Yakovlev Igor Jijikine Valeriy Zolotukhin Nina Ruslanova Viktor Bychkov Ivan Mokhovikov Anatoliy Gushchin Alexey A. Petrukhin Aleksandr Karpov Aleksey Ogurtsov Emma Černá Ruslan Ustinov Natalya Ustinova Oleg Taktarov Andrey Smolyakov Charles Dance Anna Churina Arthur Mirzoyan Igor Ogurtsov Petr Sedláček Martin Cesar Sofya Markina

Director Director

Oleg Stepchenko

Producers Producers

Leonid Ogorodnikov Oleg Andreev Anatoly Sergeev Gleb Fetisov Oleg Teterin Alexey A. Petrukhin Alexander Kulikov Ruslan Ustinov

Writers Writers

Oleg Stepchenko Aleksandr Karpov

Story Story

Nikolai Gogol

Editor Editor

Petr Zelenov

Cinematography Cinematography

Yaroslav Pilunskyi Vladimír Smutný

Assistant Directors Asst. Directors

Maxim Malinin Dmitry Galperin

Executive Producers Exec. Producers

Aleksey Ogurtsov Oleg Lyubaev

Additional Photography Add. Photography

Jiří Maxa Aleksandr Sakhno

Production Design Production Design

Arthur Mirzoyan

Special Effects Special Effects

Kamil Jaffar

Visual Effects Visual Effects

Artur Abidnov Viktor Lakisov Eduard Kargin Igor Zadorin Hristo Velev Evgeniy Gittsigrat Dmitriy Tokoyakov Arkadiy Dubinin Nikolay Goryaev Ilya Shutov Mikhail Korovyansky

Stunts Stunts

Jiří Kuba Aleksandr Stetsenko

Composer Composer

Anton Garcia

Sound Sound

Bob Beemer Arcady Noskov Ivan Titov Yuliya Ratnikova

Costume Design Costume Design

Jarmila Konečná

Makeup Makeup

Pyotr Gorshenin Natalya Gorina

Russian Film Group Marinsgroup

UK Germany Russia Ukraine Czechia

Primary Language

Spoken languages.

English Russian

Releases by Date

30 jan 2014, 15 may 2015, 02 jul 2015, 08 oct 2015, 03 apr 2015, 22 may 2015, 01 jun 2015, releases by country.

• Theatrical 12
• Digital PG12
• Theatrical 12+
• Theatrical 16
• Physical 15

128 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by PT99 ★★½

"I'm leaving psilocybin mushrooms in vodka for a week– or –until something interesting happens!"

Review by haley ★★½

this was pretty silly from the beginning but still fun and then slowly started getting worse and worse until it became completely unwatchable

Review by Hollie Horror ★★½ 1

2014 big budget adaptation of Nikolay Gogol's VIY, loved all of the lush forests and CGI tree root monsters but the only decent, well-developed character was an old hag who was a little on the rapey-side, that was kinda weird you know what else is weird? I'm starting to wonder if Charles Dance is a real person, I do not care to elaborate but he's in this movie as a strict grumpy guy again.

Thank you for reading my webpage : )

Review by Dustin Baker ★★★½ 1

I watched this under the title Forbidden Empire, not realizing that it was actually the long-time coming remake of Viy when I started it. Immediately, I had to stop it and look it up because this certainly wasn't the bottom-barrel genre fare typically released by this label. I wasn't even fucking aware that the film had been finally made , let alone already dumped onto our shores as a generic dvd at home with garbage on the racks at Walmart. Not even a blu-ray, man.

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Ein Engländer will die Welt vermessen und landet bei seiner Reise durch Osteuropa in einem Dorf, in dem die Tochter des Anführers stirbt und fortan ein Leben als Hexe fristet. Da auch ein Dämonenfürst und seine Brut die Gegend unsicher machen, soll der Neuankömmling, den die Leute mit Argwohn beäugen, helfen. Die Geschichte basiert auf der Erzählung "Wij", die ein Klassiker der russischen Literatur ist und mich dünkt der Verdacht, dass man diese kennen sollte, um der Handlung dieser Verfilmung ganz folgen zu können. Ohne dieses Wissen war mir das Geschehen zu wirr und so ergab ich mich die meiste Zeit den stimmungsvollen Bildern. Die Zeit des frühen 18ten Jahrhunderts wird…

Review by Steven Millan ★★½

As anyone who has ever seen in knows,THE VIJ(which was a cinematic adaptation of Nikolai Gogol's 19835 short story) was a very chilling and unique 1967 Russian horror film that did a lot with the less(budget-wise) that it had on its hands as it later became an unsung rare horror classic upon those that discovered it in the 90s and early 00s/2000s. This long-in-the-works Russian/Ukraine/Czech remake of THE VIJ was an often on-and-off project(with one-time rumors of plans of Robert Englund joining the project[which he eventually didn't]) that frequently opened,closed,and re-oped its production and filming until it was finally completed and released as a 3-D film in Russian but released in 2-D form when it made its American and England…

Review by MawileMage 💜 ★½

Some of the worst CGI effects I've ever seen from a movie made in the 2010's, coupled with a completely incomprehensible story, make this confused mixture of The Village and Pan's Labyrinth hardly rise above just being a rubbish mess.

Review by Tim Brayton ★★

The screenplay is a confounding mess and nothing surrounding it is much of an encouragement to try and untangle the different braids of story material. In general, it is best when it's strictly focused on the eerie sense of "what the fuck?" in rooms where paranormal shenanigans are warming up, and you can kind of see the shape of Nikolai Gogol's Viy , without even having to squint. Though even these relative high points are done in by the laughably bad effects that needed to be a whole lot less ambitious if they were fated to be this inexpensive. There's also simply not enough of these spooky and/or gross-out moments in a film with a simply punshing 130-minute running time. Feels like a cross between Guillermo del Toro and Pirates of the Caribbean while only being about 1/20th as much fun as that sounds now that I've typed it out.

Review by FakeRobHunter ★★

Lots of problems here -- tone, acting, script, pacing -- but the creature design and execution are pretty goddamn spectacular. Not enough to make it a good movie, but enough to make it interesting.

Review by Felipe V. ★★½

Cinta remotamente basada en el cuento de Gogol del mismo nombre, Viy resulta un ensamble realmente extraño que comienza bien, y se descalabra a la mitad.

La historia narra las peripecias de un geógrafo inglés que, debido a ciertas desventuras, llega a un remoto pueblo ucraniano.

Allí los lugareños le solicitarán ayuda para confrontar una terrible maldición que, ellos creen, está azotando al lugar.

La cinta tiene un comienzo potente e intrigante, siempre teniendo presente que su fuente original es un cuento de terror.

Sin embargo, al poco andar todo comienza a volverse un poco caótico y cuesta sostener el tono o la narrativa, que se vuelve más enrevesada de lo necesario.

Leyendo sobre la historia original, la incorporación del…

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Film review: forbidden empire (2014).

Jeff Mohr 05/30/2015 Uncategorized

In 1701, Jonathan Green, an English cartographer and inventor, sets out to map the world. When he reaches Eastern Europe, he finds himself a key player in a power struggle between the leader of an ersatz religion and the local inhabitants, with the life of a young girl hanging in the balance.

The main character, Jonathan Green, regards himself as not only a cartographer, but also as a scientist and inventor. His invention is a unique device that he claims will revolutionize the field of cartography and will enable countries to be accurately mapped as they truly are. After being caught in bed with his paramour, an English nobleman’s daughter, he flees and begins his mapping adventure. Throughout the film, he communicates with his lover through coded letters delivered by carrier pigeons.

After a year, Green reaches an unnamed village in Eastern Europe – the people are described as Slavic – and he discovers that the people are in the thrall of a religious leader who dominates them with superstition, fear of demons and witches, and threats of the wrath of God. The forces of good, Green and several of the locals, do battle with the evil priest, a witch, ghosts, living vines, a pack of strange cadaver wolves, a mythical seven-horned beast, a multi-eyed monster, thieves, demons, and more.

The movie, directed by Oleg Stepchenko, ambitiously attempts to be a sweeping epic and is equal parts science fiction, fairytale, horror story, mystery, and romantic adventure. The story is loosely based on Viy , an 1835 horror short story by Nikolai Gogol, which was also the basis for the 1967 film of the same title. As evidence of the film makers’ ambitions, this film – again, loosely based on a short story – is intended as the first part of a trilogy. The 2 nd part, Viy 2: Journey to China , has already begun filming.

Jonathan Green is played by Jason Flemyng, recently of Stonehearst Asylum (2014). Flemyng does an admirable job and puts a lot of energy into the role. The estimable Charles Dance, Tywin Lannister on Game of Thrones, plays the father of the wayward daughter. Dance does his usual superb job, but it is wasted in a small supporting role.

This film has a few things going for it. I loved the gadgets! Green’s coach is well thought out and reproduced. It has an interior more like a luxury railcar berth from which he can also operate and steer the coach, and it has many built-in, innovative gadgets. The film also includes fictitious 18 th century versions of motion picture and holographic projectors. The set design of the village and the church perched atop a precipice had a great feel and was perfect for the world in which the story took place.

My first complaint is that the majority of the actors are dubbed while the lead and a few others speak English. The effect reminded me of watching a spaghetti western in which the vocal inflections don’t quite match the actors’ expressions or demeanor. In addition, some of the translations used in the dubbing bordered on the ridiculous. The overall effect was irritating and interfered with the flow of the story. I much prefer captioning to dubbing, but since the main character speaks in English, a mix of captioning and English probably would have been just as off-putting.

The CGI is good but at the same time appears more like the technology of five years past.

And the plot? There are inconsistencies throughout the movie. I don’t know if it’s the editing or the script, but transitions between scenes seem cut short or missing key lines of dialogue. One minute, the Charles Dance character thinks poorly of Jonathan Green, and then later states that he has unfairly judged poor Mr. Green with little or no expanation. In one scene, it appears the story is being told through Jonathan’s pigeon-carried letters to his girlfriend, while at other times, this story telling device is entirely absent. I don’t think there is anything wrong with the plot, but there is something amiss in the storytelling.

It turns out that Forbidden Empire has been in production since 2006 and the original release date was set in 2009. However, filming wasn’t completed until 2012. At some point, a decision was made to release it in 3D and a lot of the film was reshot. The length of time in production could have had some impact on what I viewed to be unevenness of the storytelling and some of the editing.

In all fairness, I have to admit that I viewed Forbidden Empire, an epic film shot in 3D, streaming on a laptop. This surely affected my perception of the CGI.

While they should be complimented for their ambitious efforts, in my opinion, the filmmaker’s reach has exceeded their grasp. I found the visuals and the plot to be interesting, but the storytelling to be sorely lacking and very confusing. I had to watch this movie three times to get a vague idea of what happened.

If you have a chance to view this on the big screen, you might take a chance on Forbidden Empire just for the visuals, energy, and gadgetry. Otherwise, I suspect you’ll be none the worse for missing it.

Overall, I have to give this film 2 stars on a scale of 5.

Tags 2014 Agnia Ditkovskite Aleksey Chadov Andrey Smolyakov Forbidden Empire Jason Flemyng Oleg Stepchenko Viy Yuriy Tsurilo

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Early-18th-century cartographer Jonathan Green undertakes a scientific voyage from Western Europe to the East. Having passed through Transylvania and crossed the Carpathian Mountains, he finds himself in a small village lost in impassable woods of Ukraine. Nothing but chance and heavy fog could bring him to this cursed place. People who live here do not resemble any other people which the traveler saw before that. The villagers, having dug a deep moat to fend themselves from the rest of the world, share a naive belief that they could save themselves from evil, failing to understand that evil has made its nest in their souls and is waiting for an opportunity to gush out upon the world.

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Forbidden Empire

Forbidden empire movie review.

Written by Jeff Tolbert

Released by Entertainment One

Directed by Aleksandr Karpov and Oleg Stepchenko Written by Oleg Stepchenko 2014, 127 minutes, Not Rated VOD released on May 22nd, 2015 | DVD released on June 30th, 2015

Starring: Jason Flemyng as Dzhonatan Grin Andrey Smolyakov as Otets Paisiy Aleksey Chadov as Petrus Agnia Ditkovskite as Nastusya

Words. Reviews start with words, usually. I'm having trouble thinking of any just at the moment. Um. Hello! Uh. Guys, okay this movie is ridiculous. Let's start there.

Forbidden Empire is the story of an Englishman named Jonathan ("Dzhonatan" in the credits) who dreams of accurately mapping the political boundaries of the world. We first meet Jonathan when he's chased out of his lover's bed by her enraged father. With this inauspicious beginning, Jonathan sets off on his cartographic adventure in a horse-drawn, self-steering carriage, or something.

Meanwhile in Russia...

There's a village that has a demon problem. A pair of young girls are attacked by a monster, one of them dies and the other goes mad. The dead girl is laid out in the church by her grieving father, and—like— and—

I just— Huh. This is where it gets nuts. This movie is NUTS.

So the girl's spirit is now evil, and she attacks a priest who is sent to the church to pray over her, and the church is marked as an evil place and nobody will go there anymore. Of course Jonathan's wanderings take him to the village, where he gets wrapped up in the drama with the dead girl and the demons and whatnot. He's enlisted by Sotnik, the dead girl's father and village headman, to make a map of the village for reasons undefined. Sotnik instructs Jonathan to go to the old church, where he'll have a good vantage from which to do his mapmaking magic. In so doing, Jonathan inevitably learns the truth of what's going on in the village and ultimately sets all to right.

The thing is, it's virtually impossible to follow the narrative thread of this beast. I'm not sure if something's lost in translation—much of the dialogue is Russian, badly dubbed in English—or if cinematic conventions are different in that country, or some combination of these and other factors, but I found it very difficult to keep up. Not that the plot is complex; it's just unwound in fits and starts, occasionally jumping back and forth in time and place and really doesn't make sense at all. Jonathan sends cryptic messages to his beloved and their new baby back in England via carrier pigeon, and the scene flips back to her and her smarmy father periodically as they read his notes. I don't know the intended purpose of these scenes, but they only serve to further confuse an already needlessly convoluted, erratic story. The film also suffers from trying to do far too many things at once and not managing to do any of them well. It has elements of horror, action/adventure in the vein of Pirates of the Caribbean, and slapstick comedy (er, also in the vein of Pirates), but doesn't do any of these genres well enough to justify their inclusion (also, again, just like Pirates). It is, in short, a mess.

In one scene Jonathan is drinking with a bunch of men from the village when they all turn into hideous Evil Dead-style demons, rendered in pretty awful CG. He flees from them and comes face to face with Viy, the legendary, I guess, boss demon? Then he wakes up, and everything's back to normal, so maybe it was all a drunken dream, OR WAS IT. This scene seemed not to serve any purpose at all, aside from adding a thin layer of ambiguity to an already messy plot.

The film is full of things like this, moments that just feel kind of unnecessary at best, totally bewildering at worst. It may be, again, that some of this is cultural, that there are meanings which are simply not coming through to me as a Western viewer. And none of this is helped by the poor English dub, which is often distracting. (I don't know why filmmakers assume that Western viewers can't handle subtitles. Wait, yes I do. I know why. Because reading.) In the end, though, all of this prevented me from really caring about what was happening or even finding it particularly interesting.

I wanted very much to like Forbidden Empire , precisely because it seemed to combine so many disparate elements in a lighthearted, humorous way. Unfortunately, it just doesn't come together. Evidently it's based on Viy, a short story by Nikolai Gogol, which had an earlier film adaptation in 1967. The film did serve to pique my interest in the original text and that earlier movie, and approached in the right spirit there is some fun to be had here. (Go in expecting a more nonsensical, cheesier Army of Darkness and you may actually enjoy yourself.) It also has some cool visuals and scenery. Sadly, there's just not much else to recommend it.

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Forbidden Empire Reviews

• 2 hr 25 mins
• Horror, Fantasy, Action & Adventure, Science Fiction
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An enterprising cartographer discovers a cursed village where evil creatures roam free. He must battle them using a mix of folk sorcery and swordplay. Based on the story by Nikolai Gogol.

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Forbidden Empire Reviews

There are some thrilling sequences, and the monsters are great, especially for low-budget CGI.

Full Review | Original Score: 5.5/10 | Jun 8, 2015

Forbidden Empire strives so hard to be a fantastical epic, but muddied storytelling can't be saved by the horrors of Viy.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | May 25, 2015

The visuals are enough of a reason to give it a watch, but the film as a whole becomes a mostly forgettable mash of entertaining effects and dull interactions.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | May 25, 2015

FORBIDDEN EMPIRE is wild and colorful and exciting and funny; it's neck-deep in witches and monsters and magic and devilry. It's a bit of a mess, but it's the sort of mess more movies should make of themselves.

Full Review | May 21, 2015