In the short time since I conceived Mockbuster Video, my attempt to watch and review every direct-to-video cheesefest to be released by The Asylum this year, I’ve already encountered a number of surprises. For starters, there’s the subject matter of the studio’s first film of the year (for which my review will be completed shortly), as well as the unexpectedly tumultuous behind-the-scenes drama surrounding Sharknado 3. But perhaps most surprising of all is the fact that the studio’s second release won’t be straight-to-video at all. The Brattle – an actual movie theater – will be screening The Asylum’s Avengers Grimm.

To the uninitiated (who have not read the first installment of my perhaps ill-advised odyssey), The Asylum specializes in what they term “tie-in” films, but are more commonly known as “mockbusters”: low-budget films which bear an unmistakable similarity to higher budget films (e.g. Alien vs. Hunter, Atlantic Rim, and so forth). In a rare double-mockbuster, Avengers Grimm appears to marry the plot of Marvel’s The Avengers with the fairy tale mash-up aesthetic of TV’s Once Upon a Time. Following the destruction of the Magic Mirror by Rumpelstiltskin, a supergroup of fabled princesses (including Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, and Rapunzel) band together to save the world.

Or something. To be honest, I have no idea what it will be like to see an Asylum film on the big screen in a theater (possibly) full of people, but I am bound by my peculiar commitment to find out. My review will be up later, but if you’re brave enough to experience the madness for yourself, join me for a cinematic experience beyond compare for, oh, a month and change.

–Oscar Goff

Avengers Grimm
2015
dir. Jeremy M. Inman
90 min.