Mandrake is set in the hostile jungles of deep South America where a team paid for by rich businessman Harry Vargas (Benito Martinez) has orders to locate & take a centuries old dagger from an ancient burial ground. Soldier for hire McCall (Max Martini) is the brawn while shapely archaeologist Felicia (Betsy Russell), the small team of explorers find the burial ground, find the dagger & remove it from a pile of old bones. Straight away things go to pot, they are attacked by a local tribe who believe that dagger should not be removed from it’s rightful resting place & a huge tree monster who has been released from it’s banishment once the dagger had been removed. Stuck in an isolated jungle with a huge tree monster after them the explorers find themselves easy prey & soon the survivors realise that the only way they will live to see civilisation again is to send the tree monster back from where it came…
Edited, co-written & directed by Tripp Reed this is yet another made for television Sy-Fy Channel creature feature, personally I am getting sick of them as usually they are terrible but I suppose I can watch them for free on television so it evens itself out a bit. Hey, I said a bit. Well, someone must still be watching these things otherwise they wouldn’t get made, would they? Having said all that I suppose Mandrake isn’t as bad as some of the crap the Sy-Fy Channel show, I suppose the monsters which is a possessed tree monster is a bit different & there aren’t quite as many dumb moments here as one might expect. I mean even all the mobile phones, radios, communications equipment & GPS locator’s work throughout which is maybe a first. The reason for our heroes to go back into the jungle to save missing friends & the idea of sticking together rather than splitting up is reasonable enough motivation although it’s harder to understand why the rich Vargas would risk his life in search of this dagger, he goes into the jungle himself only a few days after the previous expedition was slaughtered. Look, everything is alright, the character’s are alright, the plot about ancient curses, treasure hunts & tree monsters is alright if undemanding & predictable & even the special effects are alright but I can’t really muster up any more enthusiasm for Mandrake other to to simply say it’s alright & not as bad as I expected but that’s not really that much praise. At just over 80 odd minutes long Mandrake moves along at a decent pace, is never flat out boring & doesn’t outstay it’s welcome.
To be fair the tree monster made up of trees, branches, vines & roots looks quite good & is something a bit different from the giant animal/insect/fish films the Sy-Fy Channel usually churn out. The CGI computer effects won’t exactly impress anyone but they aren’t too bad either although why doesn’t the tree monster attack people using all of it’s vines & roots rather than just a single one while the other’s uselessly just wave in the air in the background? There’s a bit of gore, the tree monster impales a few people with it’s root & vine tentacles, someone is ripped in half & a pair of severed hands are seen but overall most of the attacks are fairly tame.
Filmed in Shreveport in Louisiana the locations look more like woods rather than deep jungle & I half kept expecting to see some houses or a road in the background. The acting is OK if not particularly special.
Mandrake is a slightly better than usual Sy-Fy Channel creature feature which isn’t really saying that much to be honest, it’s a passable time waster & nothing more.
