The Devil's Rock

Set on the Channel Islands in 1944, New Zealand filmmaker Paul Campion’s WWII horror movie taps into myths about Hitler and the occult, featuring a shape-shifting female demon conjured up by a Nazi necromancer. Sadly, a fuzzy matte shot of a German coastal fortification sets the tone, as the unusual setting and original ideas are scaled down to fit a micro-budget. Two Kiwi commandos, Captain Ben Grogan (Craig Hill) and Sergeant Joe Tane (Karlos Drinkwater) have come to blow up the bunker, as a distraction from the imminent D-Day landings at Normandy. Inside, Grogan finds a maze of tunnels, eviscerated German soldiers, the crazed Colonel Klaus Meyer (Matthew Sunderland) and a manacled woman who resembles his dead fiancée, Helena (Gina Varela).  An effects specialist turned director, Campion made his name with two eye-catching shorts: ‘Eel Girl’ and ‘Night of the Hell Hamsters’. Here he piles on the squidgy gore, arcane symbols and ancient spells; but there are only four sketchily drawn characters, the sets look cheap and the talky, linear plot needed a few more twists and unexpected dead ends.