2 out of 5

Director: Michael Mann

95-minutes seems much longer in The Keep, with erratic pacing chopped up by long, Miami-Vice-like color splashes and pans while Tangerine Dream plays some psychedelic, poorly-mixed wackiness. The Keep has cult status written all over it, but it is a boring movie. It’s been a while since I’ve read the book, and while I do recall the pacing being pretty quick, not as quick as it is here: German soldiers take up quarters in a Romanian castle. When a soldier digs out a piece of this ‘Keep’ that he believes is silver, some mist pops out and dead bodies start piling up. “Surely it’s the locals!” some Germans say, and begin offing innocents in hopes of rousting the killer. Spoiler: It’s not the locals, it’s something more devious. Thankfully, Scott Glenn is here to woo women and have glowing eyes that are important. All of this triteness could have been spun into a grounded, awesome tale (The Keep is a potentially awesome set, never fully realized, and the various emanations of the evil in the castle are surprisingly could-only-happen-in-the-80s awesome and spooky and I don’t know why this creature doesn’t pop up on more movie boogeyman lists), but Mann – spiraling into the psychedelia of his show Miami Vice – chooses to play things sort of surreal, with pinks and blues and synthesizers everywhere to be found. You can see his characteristic high / low / long shots, but no one knows what happened to the script in this movie, the pacing is unbelievable (insanely relevant events happen between scenes, then 20 minute slow pans of the castle…) and I can’t believe that they didn’t feel certain aspects (Glenn’s eyes…) wouldn’t come across as silly. And for whatever money was pumped into the creature, Ian McKellan’s makeup… well. Overall, this is a boring view. Fans of the book will shrug their shoulders, but fans of 80s supernatural cult films will probably find value.