This one is interesting at least, I'll give it that. Not sure whether it wants to be a action movie (witness the martial arts fight filled opening), a thriller with political undertones (there's a lot of it in the script) or an outright horror movie; this decides to mix them all together into a big stew pot and because of that becomes a movie that may not be dull, but has too many loose sub-plots on show.

R. Lee Ermey and Jan-Michael Vincent play Americans in the Philippines who find themselves at the center of civil unrest when local people start turning up gorily murdered. The blame falls to a young American soldier, but as it turns out it's the work of reporter Nancy Everhard who has frequent bouts of being possessed by an ancient stone that contains the spirit of a vengeful monk.

This plays better as a polticial thriller packed with gunfights than it does a horror flick; so much so that when the horror sequences do appear they feel out-of-place. Ermey (who's typecast yet again) and Vincent do fine in their roles even if Everhard is quite weak in hers; there's some alright low-scale action moments and, like I said before, it's never dull - but it all feels too "tossed together" and the horror moments are poorly done (especially the first death, how did she get in the car?) with low-scale effects (mostly just colour flashes and the like).

Directed By: Andrew Prowse.
Written By: Frederick Bailey, David Philips, John Trayne.

Starring: R. Lee Ermey, Jan-Michael Vincent, Nancy Everhard, Pat Skipper.