Devil's Bridge (2010) User Reviews

An ugly portrayal of the Welsh as a nation of rednecks

[chaugnurfaugn-269-83012 · 3/10 · 2 May 2012]

Deliverance and The Hills Have Eyes comes to Wales with outlandish and unlikely consequences with only a few redeeming features.

The plot is as basic as it comes. A group of little Englanders head to Wales for some reason. Something about the lead role, Sean, requiring the help of a dodgy wheeler dealer to save his ailing business. To be honest, the reason is peripheral, barely explored and fairly pointless.

On the way to their holiday spot in the depths of the Welsh countryside the English group encounter local psychopath Bill and things progress from there. The Devil's Bridge in the title is a local landmark which the lads visit for less than one minute of the film. Thereafter it is never mentioned nor featured again, rendering the title as pointless as much of the pre-violence plot.

If there is a message here it's ambiguous. I suspect there is one, however, since much of the senseless violence centres around Welsh nationalism and looks suspiciously indulgent coming from Cardiff born writer/director Chris Crow. Whatever the underlying subtext, the resulting movie is an ugly mish mash with little distinction between villain and victim. Certainly too little for us to give a damn who goes under the knife and who doesn't.

The characters are one dimensional, but uncomfortably true to life. It may be for this reason that I, an Englishman with a close Welsh heritage, found the whole thing to be too grim and gritty to be anything other than disturbing. For a US audience the change of locale and the perpetuated stereotype of Brits as backwards, brainless and nationalistic thugs will probably make for a fun ride, though I doubt there's enough gore to satisfy the usual crowd.

In the end, this is little more than a redneck-gone-mad slasher plucked out of the southern states and dropped into the backwaters of Wales.

Alright, boyos?

[natashabowiepinky · 3/10 · 22 March 2014]

Films that give away the end right at the start better have a good excuse for doing so. Devil's bridge doesn't even have one for existing. The whole 'getting stranded in the midst of rural Wales' schnik has already been done in Inbred, and there it was a whole village of cannibals up against the out-of-towners. Here, it's just some bearded drunk with a gun hunting down three cheeky chappies from Essex... there's just no comparison.

Particularly as in the other movie, the daft scenario is treated with the levity it deserved... whereas in this effort, it's played as serious as you could imagine. Only trouble is, this permanently soused gentleman with his habit of mumbling to himself and rubbish aim would not be a threat to anyone with a brain. And yet, the film has pretensions of being a classic cat-and-mouse type thriller. Nope. Not with these idiotic losers as our 'heroes', and certainly not with this joke of a villain.

And to add insult to injury, the camera movement is so jerky throughout you'll probably need sea sickness tablets just to last the course. It it too much to ask to keep it stationary so we can understand what the hell's going on? Or are you trying to be all 'artistic' and 'gritty'? Epic FAIL on both counts there. Chris Crow is a great name for a director... can we give it to someone else?

Oh silly me I forgot, there is a final, FINAL twist which a) is complete rubbish and b) I'd already figured out based on one line of dialogue early on. Now either I'm a genius, or the movie didn't hide it very well. Okay, both statements are probably true. Regardless, this is a complete non-starter by any definition, and a waste of a perfectly good coaster. 3/10

Difficult

[anorthunbloke · 2/10 · 20 January 2014]

Just watched this in my hotel room. What a terrible film. The camera work is awful and the plot is predictable. A British Deliverance with so much potential, wasted. It's a low budget film, I get that, but that's the perfect reason to spend more time and effort developing the plot! Three English guys go to Wales for business. They end up on the wrong side of a mad Welsh guy called Bill. He is the best character in the film and gives the best performance. But that's where the positives end. Essentially, Bill ends up chasing these three guys through the woods. He catches one and kills him. Meanwhile, the other two have been running away for ages yet Bill somehow continues to WALK after them and is just behind them all the time! This happens throughout. Bill just walks, the guys leg it but Bill is always within shooting distance. Fast forward to the end (there's nothing else worth mentioning) when one of the three guys finally kills Bill. Bill is tough. He can take a few shots before a head shot kills him. The guy is at some police station where instantly you can tell the copper is just a weird as Bill. "He's bound to be Bills brother" I thought. I was right. Bills police man brother then shoots him. The. End. Give me back the last hour and a bit of my life! So frustrating was this film. ARRRGGHHH!!!

A poor attempt at a Welsh "Wolf Creek"

[welshrob1 · 2/10 · 3 April 2015]

The only reason I ended up watching this film, was I went to Blockbuster and picked four good movies, the girl behind the counter told me it would be cheaper to get five to get the movie deal. I was in a hurry and quickly grabbed this one from the Horror section. Ooops! Not the best choice I have ever made.

The plot was.. mehhh. I have lived in Australia for 20 years but I'm Welsh and come from an area quite close to the real Devil's Bridge, so I grew up in the Welsh Nationalist heartland, I was living there when the Meibion Glydwr idiots were at their most dangerous, torching holiday homes and beating up English tourists in the pubs, so I don't actually find it THAT hard to believe that a mentally disturbed Nationalistic loner would go bonkers and attack some Englishmen after downing a bottle of Whisky. So that part at least, made some sort of sense. The rest of the plot was like a string vest, thin and full of holes. The characters were underdeveloped, so it was hard to feel anything much for them. They weren't particularly likable and when they were all fighting for their lives with Parry at various points, I found that I didn't care that much who won. Possibly the worst thing about the whole film, as others have said, is the shaky camera work. It ruined the action scenes and made the whole thing look like a teen pop video. The only reason I gave it two stars instead of one, is Joshua Richards as William. He was good enough that I am surprised I haven't seen him pop up in a "proper" film. I know this film was made on a low budget but that's not an excuse. It could have been so much better without spending another penny. Just losing the shaky cam alone could have improved it no end. If you like this type of film and see it in the DVD shop, or available to download, Don't bother. Save your money and watch Wolf Creek and the sequel instead, they are so much better that it's not funny.

30 Years Too Late To Make Any Sense

[jabrbi · 2/10 · 15 July 2014]

This is your typical "city dwellers go off to the country and get chased by rural nutter" story. Sadly, it was made 30 years too late to make any sense.

We get the "we're lost on these rural roads" shtick. If they're that bad at navigating, why don't they have a GPS satellite navigation system like everybody else.

Then we get the English urbanites slagging off the Welsh country dwellers. What a cliché. Please, will writers think of something new.

Of course, nobody's mobile phone works. What a surprise! And, of course, we have the insane local with a gun and a knife on a very short fuse. This guy is too bonkers to be out of prison or an insane asylum. And where does the guy get a gun from? This is Wales in 2010. The gun laws don't allow people to have a gun like this guy does, not when he carries it about openly.

Don't forget another obligatory cliché; one bump on the rear bumper and the car stops and won't restart.

Then there's the cliché of the hunted finding a farmhouse, hoping for sanctuary, only to find that the house belongs to the nutter.

Naturally, the nutter is almost invulnerable. Boy can he take a beating. And another beating. And another.

I could go on, but you get the idea. You could probably name a few clichés of your own and there's a very good chance you'd see those clichés in this film.

One final cliché is that the story is being told in retrospect by a survivor to a police officer who doesn't believe him. But a lot of what we see on screen happens when the survivor isn't present. So how does anybody know that those events took place? And, although there is the disbelieved survivor, there are other witnesses who can confirm part of the story and identify the mad man - case closed.

If any of this happened 30 years ago it would seem new-ish. Now, it's just one sad old cliché after another. So disappointing.

Not a lot of money was spent making this film. At least, I hope not a lot of money was spent because it doesn't look like it cost more than £50 and a six-pack to make. Overall, though, a lot is done with a little money, but there are two BIG problems; 1) The camera man looks like he has Parkinsons disease and makes much of the film unwatchable, 2) The night scenes are filmed with a lot of off-screen white light to show the actors and action. The problem with the night light is that the torch the nutter is using doesn't properly delineate what the nutter can and cannot see. So, when you have the usual situation of the hunted hiding beneath a tree trunk and the nutter right next to them, you can't see what the torch is illuminating. Instead, you can see everything. That just doesn't work.

Another problem with the lighting is that, once the hunted arrive at the farm house, it's impossible to tell what time of day it is. There's an odd black and white filter that is used which suggests that it's very early morning with an overcast sky, but then some shots look like it's meant to be night but the cameraman is using those day/night filters you used to see in the 1970's and before when they'd film during the day and use the filter to pretend it's deepest night. But when the action is taking place in the farm barn, it's clear that it's daylight outside. It just confuses the viewer and makes it difficult to understand the timing of events.

The raison d'etre of the nutter is that he hates foreigners from the city but, at one point, he shoots a complete stranger with no indication is he's a local or not. Just how he planned to cover up that murder is never explained.

By the time you're near the end of the film everything has stopped making sense. If this was America, a la Deliverance, you might be able to believe the plot, but not in rural Wales. And nobody in the UK is so ignorant of how police procedure works that they wouldn't know what the final twist was going to be.

At the end of the film, there are too many lose ends to believe the events, and those lose ends will result in the truth being revealed. So, in the end, the actions of at least two people in the film make no sense whatsoever, and that just breaks the whole film apart.

I know lots of people say don't watch this or that film on this site, and I try to avoid using the cliché, but this time it's about the best you can say about this film - avoid at all costs.

I don't want no trouble..

[godamndevil1977 · 7/10 · 18 March 2012]

For the most part, this is a pretty good film.

It's quite apparent that the picture was made on a shoe-string but let us not worry, because the film crew use what little they have to keep you gripped.

Playing on many familiar strangers-in-a-strange-town themes, Devil's Bridge is menacing, gritty & dark. Just how you want it.

There were moments (especially the ending) I figured were not thought-out as well as can be, but it doesn't matter because for 90 minutes the 3 main actors plus villain do a fantastic job of cat n mouse. As the film rolled on, each actor seemed to grow more & more comfortable within their role, at times, too believable especially for the deranged, psychotic farmer.

No one-liners or Tarantino-style-rip-off speeches, just a pretty good parable painting a picture of very bad timing for three 30-something men with no respect for strangers.

I doubt you'd be disappointed.

What could have been....

[ddraig7 · 6/10 · 23 March 2012]

A very good film apart from the camera work.

Low budget obviously....Very good acting from all concerned,but the shaky camera drove me nuts.If it was intentional, I don't see how it could improve on the mood or suspense of the film, or the film as a whole. If it had been a Blair Witch type film filmed by one of the cast, I could see the reasoning behind it. Still, it is a very moody,gritty piece of work that kept me interested throughout. It was nice to see a film that had no need for costly special effects and which relied on good acting and location for it's plot. Anyway......6/10 from me......could have been an 8 if not for the camera work.

the shoe-string budget left me with a bitter feeling

[trashgang · 6/10 · 20 January 2013]

The British Deliverance it is called, in some way I agree. But I was left with a hunger here. It never becomes rather brutal or messy. There are of course tough situations but some things are done off-camera due the shoe-string budget. The story itself you have seen a thousand times.

When 3 friends go to Wales for business they come across William Parry (David Schofield). He's a bit of a weirdo were even the locals are afraid of. But when the 3 friends go to the local pub guess who's coming in for a drink. Parry of course. When he's out for trouble one of the friends call him a w*nker and from there on they are in deep trouble. Survive or die. But it also bring in the shaky camera and it annoyed me sometimes.

It isn't that bad at all but rather low on blood except for the final I have seen better UK flicks concerning such stories. The acting was okay and the language for outsiders is sometimes hard to understand.

The title refers to the place the friends wanted to go but never got there due William. As this was Chris Crow's first attempt I can dig it but I do understand that some will be left with a bitter feeling.

Gore 1/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 2/5 Story 3/5 Comedy 0/5

probably very suspenseful and a movie you'l never forget; a copy of 2 earlier moviesies

[grandcyn · 2 April 2018]

After reading the plot I immediately recognized it; those who wrote the reviews apparently never saw The Most Dangerous Game or Deliverance, both excellent and unforgettable films; although Deliverance takes place in the back country of southern U.S. and is about a canoe trip; most dangerous game is very clever adn I hink the plot has been used Based on those 2 films I recommend The Bridge