The Richardson family is expecting a new addition when daughter Rebecca finds out she’s pregnant, but the excitement is cut short when a menacing young man by the name of Aksel, on behalf of Aksels dad shows up to offer to by the land that the family lives on. He is quickly shot down, thus leading to a series of deaths and all-around bad things. You see, Aksels dad, Henrik, is the head of an evil cult that wants something on that land.

Baphomet is interesting in the sense that it tries to play the evil cult bit rather straight faced and it mostly succeeds in the first half. Though the acting goes from okay to wildly ridiculous. The effects go from pretty not bad practical to what the heck CGI. That’s actually the overall feel of the film, it either tries to be a serious movie or it swan dives into sheer campiness, but it can’t seem to commit to one or the other. And that tonal whiplash only hurts the final product.

The acting is just as much of a wildcard as anything else in this movie. We have Rebecca (Rebecca Weaver) who does well enough as the lead and mostly conveys the needed emotion, mostly. It seems that the “good guys” were told to be serious, while the “bad guys” were told to go full on villain. None more so the cult leader Henrik (Giovanni Lombardo Radice). He hams it up every chance he gets, from his thick sometimes Icelandic accent to his general evilness. It definitely feels like two completely different movies at times.

When we come to editing and writing, we end up running into the same issues. The writing varies wildly all throughout. As the bad things starts to happen, it holds its own as a tense film. But then we get to a witch (the good kind) that can resurrect people with little to no problems. Next up is the law enforcement that seem competent enough until it was decided that it was good idea for a deputy to bring a backpack full of dynamite to a call for help.

On the technical front, things are a bit more solid though. With the sound being generally even and easy to hear. The editing stumbles a bit and can cause confusion on how much time has passed but it’s not too noticeable in the grand scheme of things. The practical effects are actually pretty good and rightfully gruesome the downside to this though is that the questionable use of CGI stands out even more.

Baphomet sits square in middle of road in terms of movie quality. Though the biggest challenge facing it is the fact that it’s always fighting itself over what kind of movie it wants to be. Does it want to be a corny “so bad it’s funny” movie? If you only watched the second half, you would think so. Does it want to be an actual horror/thriller film? Maybe, some of the script wants to be taken seriously but then ends up being someone spouting one-liners while throwing explosives. If anything, you’ll never know what to expect and ultimately that’s not the worst way to spend an hour and some change.

5 out of 10