#darin scott

Opening this weekend:

The Oath--The warrior Moroni lives in a cave in a primordial forest. The strapping fellow is the last surviving member of his clan, exterminated by Aaron, the King of a rival tribe. One day he comes across Bathsheba, a beautiful concubine who has escaped Aaron's clutches. He gives her shelter from the storm, and they gradually bond. But of course, the cruel Aaron isn't done with either of them.

From his name alone, you may recognize that this film's hero is based on a figure from The Book of Mormon. The last of that tome's prophets, Moroni is supposed to have stashed the gold plates on which it was written, and after his death is supposed to have revealed them, as an angel, to Joseph Smith near Palmyra, New York in 1823.

In this movie, he's played by director-co-writer Darin Scott, buffed and bearded and armored in a reasonable approximation of the Viggo Mortensen-Alexander Skarsgård mold, but with little sense of barbaric danger (despite some broadsword combat, the movie is only rated PG-13). He's a studly but saintly paragon; at one point Bathsheba playfully tells him "You are boring." She's not entirely wrong, alas--he murmurs his lines, and spends a lot of his footage meditating or gazing into the spiritual distance--but he has a dash of guileless, unassuming Mormon sweetness that makes him endearing anyway.

Besides, the heavies liven up the picture. Most amusing is Billy Zane as the rotten Aaron, belting out his lines from behind a Muppet-like ball of frizzy beard in what at times sounds for all the world like an Irish accent. Karina Lombard is formidable as a lethal archer, as is Eugene Brave Rock as Aaron's henchman. "Why fight for a soulless coward?" Moroni wails at them at one point; it struck me as a good question for the contemporary Republican party.

Tales from the Hood 3 will be released on DVD and Digital on October 6 via Universal Pictures. (Amazon also lists a Blu-ray, but it’s unavailable. The official announcement does not mention it.)

Tales from the Hood 1 and 2's Rusty Cundieff and Darin Scott return to write and direct the horror anthology. Tony Todd stars with London Brown, Cooper Huckabee, Patrick Emmanuel Abellard, Sage Arrindell, Savannah Basley, Jaime M. Callica, and Lynn Whitfield. Spike Lee executive produces.

No special features are listed. Check out the trailer below. The film is set to play on Syfy in October as well.

Shantel VanSanten in Something Wicked (2014)

Dir.Darin Scott

As a young couple embarks upon their wedding plans, gruesome secrets from their past collide with sinister forces of the present to ensure these newlyweds do not live "happily-ever-after."

*Brittany Murphy's final film appearance. She completed her scenes before her death in December 2009.