Mann must have learned much in between this and Manhunter, such as how to construct a decent story. Taking place in a Romanian village in 1941, the Keep is a mysterious fortress of some sort that some German soldiers decide is a good place to hole up in. Even though they are specifically warned by the caretaker not to molest any of the silver crosses embedded in the walls, two soldiers unearth a passage to the walled-off inside of the structure only to have their faces blown off. Meanwhile, another group of German soldiers lead by Major Kaempffer (Gabriel Byrne), this time wearing the SS armbands which remind me I probably need to pay more attention to history, arrive after the death of many of the first group to take over control from Captain Woermann (Prochnow). Also meanwhile, an old Jewish man and his daughter are called from a Nazi war camp to help unravel the mysterious deaths of the German troops. Still meanwhile, vampire/android/androgynous thing Glaeken Trismegestus (Glenn) is traveling to the Keep to dispatch of the evil that is inside. As you can tell, the story is just a tad fragmented.
Based on a novel by F. Paul Wilson which I can only assume was much more coherent, Mann crafts a story that I can only describe as baffling. What could have been an interesting movie with a brigade of troops being attacked by a supernatural presence is horribly botched here as there are many different stories going on with very little intersection and none of which make much damn sense. The German soldiers are shacked up in the Keep we assume for wartime purposes but they are not really doing anything other than stringing lights and getting killed. Glaeken is, I assume, supposed to be the hero but he does not show up until thirty minutes in, is largely MIA until the finale (save for a random sex scene), and poorly developed to the point that we don’t know (or really care) who he is or why he wants to kill the Keep monster-whatever. The most interesting aspect of the story though was of Dr. Cuza (McKellan) who is so enraged at the German army that he joins forces with the monster to bring them down without stopping to question if he is unleashing more harm than he seeks to destroy.
The unfortunate thing about Cuza’s storyline is that McKellan was quite simply horrible here with a performance that consists mostly of yelling and screaming like a senile old man. He is in good company though as short of Byrne and Prochnow at times, the acting ranged from laughable to depressing to watch. And just like Glaeken, we really know nothing of these characters and most of them are around just for random off-screen kills anyway. While there is nothing inherently wrong with the disposing of one-dimensional characters in a horror movie, these deaths added nothing as there was honestly no tension or suspense throughout the whole movie. I chalk this up to the fact that the monster is specifically targeting the German soldiers, most of whom are douchebags anyway, so we are pretty safe to assume that nothing bad will happen to a character that we may have some attachment to. I also attribute the complete lack of horror elements to the score by Tangerine Dream which swung wildly from somewhat cool to horribly out of place in anything other than a techno-color light show.
Reading around after seeing the movie, there seems to be an underground following of this movie but for reasons I cannot comprehend. I will give Mann credit in that the aesthetics are pretty impressive and I enjoyed the use of widescreen to create spectacular shots in the bowels of the castle. Also the special effects are overall pretty good once you consider the time it was made and lack of money it was likely made with. With a little more focus and a lot more professional acting, this could have turned out to be a decent horror flick awash in 80s cheese instead of a wasted ninety-five minute affair (probably close to 80 had there not been as much slo-mo).
In (possible) fairness to the movie, some of the unanswered questions or characterizations may very well have been there but the transfer and audio on Netflix were horrendous to the point that entire lines of dialog are unintelligible. This could be due to the fact that the film is nowhere to be found on DVD (but on a $200 VHS from Amazon if you’re interested) but honestly, the whole package was shoddy so I would not be surprised if the audio was that bad originally.
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